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SERMONS 

FROM THE PULPIT. 

BY 

H. B. BASCOM, D. D., LL. D. 

^VERE ALLOWED OF GOD, TO BE PUT IN TRUST WITH THE GOSPEL, 
EVEN SO VTE SPEAK. 



FIRST SERIES. 



LOUISVILLE, KT.: 
PRINTED BY MORTON" & GRISWOLD, 

FOR THE AUTHOR AND COMPANY. 

1 8 50. 



BX ;f ^ % 
1*5 50 



Entered, according to an Act of Congress, in the year 1849, 
BY H. B. BASCOM, 
In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States, for 
the District of Kentucky. 

lu £ixohaxitfe 
22 letdOr 



STEREOTYPED BY E. SHEPARD, CIN., O. 



INDEX. 



Peeface, 5 

Sermon I — Christianity — its Nature, Diffusion and Effects,.. . . 25 

Sermon II — The Pulpit — its Institution and Functions, 56 

Sermon III — The Death of Christ — a Propitiation for Sin,. ... 88 

Sermon lY — Messiah's Eangdom, 110 

Sermon V — Divine Mercy Rejected — the Ground and Eeason 

of Punishment, 141 

Sermon VI — Grandeur and Humiliation of Jesus Christ, 171 

Sermon YII — The Resurrection of Christ, 198 

Sermon YIII— The Lamb of God— Seen and Sought, 234 

Sermon IX — Christ Crucified — the Great Distinctive Burden 

of Christian Preaching, 2G5 

Sermon X — The Triumph of Christianity over Death, 288 

Sermon XI — The Judgment, 315 

Sermon XII — Heaven, 346 



PREFACE. 



The Author having consented to the publication of a 
volume of his Sermons, owes it to those who may become 
his readers, not less than to himself, to explain the cir- 
cumstances under which they Yv'ere prepared for use, and 
are now, without any material alteration of any kind, 
allowed to go to the press. Had these sermons been 
originally prepared for publication, or even re -written 
with a view of adapting them to the reader rather than 
hearer, he should have deemed explanation out of place, 
because unlikely to be of any service to himself or the 
reader. As it is, hovv^ever, explanation becomes neces- 
sary, and the author is compelled to risk a brief statement 
of facts, by way of introduction. 

Under the mingled influence of youthful ardor and relig- 
ious zeal, encouraged and brought forward by the kind- 
ness, and perhaps indiscreet solicitude of friends, the au- 
thor, regarding himself divinely directed, early resolved 
upon the Christian Ministry as the business of his life, and 
was formally admitted to the Pulpit, and commenced 
preaching when he was but sixteen years old, and vrith 
such qualifications only, as in connection with his age, 
may be inferred from the fact, that whatever native vi- 
gor of intellect he possessed, and an education which had 
been little more than commenced, had, under the pres- 
sure of many disadvantages, been turned to some little ac- 



6 



PREFACE. 



count, by unremitted devotion to elementary books and 
study, the two preceding years. 

The very slight miscellaneous training he had received, 
was as defective in kind as limited in extent, and with 
heart and will to go forward in the great work before him, 
he felt from the first, and at every step, that something 
beyond the ordinary food and shelter of mind, was neces- 
sary to prepare him for the pulpit. He saw that deter- 
mined and earnest reliance upon his own efforts was his 
only resource, and relying upon Divine aid, he sought to 
apply himself accordingly. Without guide or model, 
with no one to direct or strike out a course for him as a 
student, he was left to project and explore his own path, 
or be content with what he was likely to become, from 
the mere force of circumstances. 

With strong intuitive perceptions and sympathies, in 
relation to the good and the beautiful in nature and mo- 
rals, with irrepressible yearnings to learn and toknov/; 
the means and expedients to which he would be driven, 
as the only possible condition of ability and influence as 
a minister, can be readily imagined. He soon found that 
while improvement, in the field of thought and labor he 
had chosen, had some fixed and necessary elements, many 
of its phases were altogether doubtful and tentative, and 
that all depended on trial and effort, and under the stim- 
ulus and pressure of duty and necessity, the tension of 
strong desire and unrelaxed endeavor, yielding to the 
tendencies of his nature without rule or model, except the 
ideal of his ovm perceptions, he appealed for aid to what- 
ever was likely to avail him. He was the pupil, and 
sought to learn of whatever there was about him, from 
which he could derive instruction or aid. Eeading, re- 
flection, observation and experience — inward springs and 
outward relations— all the affinities and influences of mind^ 



PREFACE 



7 



thouglit and action, within his reach, were honestly in- 
voked in view of lio-ht and o^nidance. The urgent suces- 
sion of labor and duty, called for constant preparation. 
The night became a necessary part of the day's labor. 
Thought demanded material, and ends exacted means. 
"Without constant effort and struggle for growth and en- 
largement, all hope or chance of success was foreclosed. 
Such were the circumstances of want and trial, un- 
der which the author commenced, and for a series of 
years prosecuted, his ministry ; and the reader will 
soon perceive why he has deemed it proper that the 
statement should accompany the publication of his ser- 
mons. 

The following discourses go to the jDress, in the precise 
form in which they were prepared for the pulpit. No one 
of them was written with a view to publication. They 
are in fact the ''Preaching l^otes'' of the author, as 
used by him in preparing for the pulpit, during a term 
of more than thirty years. These ISTotes, at first little 
more than outline memoranda, have gradually grown 
upon his hands as he has had occasion to use them in his 
preparations for the pulpit from time to time, until they 
have assumed the form of elaborate discourses. As none 
of these discourses have been reconstructed, either in 
plan or style, they will, as a matter of course, present 
great diversity, and, it may be, want of unity and individ- 
uality of character, on the score both of thought and 
expression. From this obvious elementary trait, the au- 
thor might have redeemed them ; but, for many reasons, 
would not. He prefers the hazard of allowing them to 
be read in the shape and livery in which they were pre- 
pared for the pulpit, and have been called for by those 
who heard them. 

The subjects, with perhaps one or two exceptions, will 



8 



PREFACE, 



be found within the ordinary range of pulpit instruction. 
The reader will perceive a sustained attempt at a popular 
practicah exhibition of the faith and ethics, the doctrines 
and duties, of Christianity. The diversity, as it regards 
style and thought, will be readily accounted for, in view 
of the circumstances under which they were produced. 
Several of them received the body and form in which they 
now appear, at least twenty years ago, when the author 
must be presumed to have thought and felt in a manner 
more or less peculiar to the earlier years of a student, re- 
lying upon his own energy and application, as the means 
and w^arrant of improvement and usefulness. The larger 
number of them date back more than fifteen years, and 
none of them are of more recent origin than ten years 
back. Thousands who have heard these sermons preached, 
in diiierent parts of the United States, and at different pe- 
riods during the last twenty-five years, cannot fail, should 
they read them, to recognize them as actual pulpit minis- 
trations, to which they were a party, and with which they 
will find themselves more or less familiar. Should these 
discourses be judged by the ordinary tests of composition 
and authorship, their true character must of necessity be 
misunderstood. They were never intended for the judg- 
ment of such a tribunal. Not one in the series was con- 
tinuously written out at one time, or even within a brief 
period. They are the growth of years, gradually matured 
and perfected, as the wants and exigencies of pulpit labor 
led or urged the author to preparation. In these sermons, 
whatever may be their value, or want of it, the loriter is 
essentially merged, and should be lost sight of, in the 
preacher. Any ambitious claim which might combine 
with the former, gives place to the simple and the actual, 
connected with the varied and current ministrations of the 
latter. The reader, instead of meeting with the more 



PREFACE 



9 



formal creations of regular continuous composition, Tvill 
meet with the somewhat irregular accumulations of 
thouo-ht and lanoaiao-e, such as have occurred to the au- 
thor, and been noted down at different times, and under 
almost every variety of circumstance. In the prepara- 
tion of these discourses, from the first elementary sketch to 
the only finish they have finally received, and often amid 
the haste and urgency incident to unexpected calls and 
sudden occasions, the author had of necessity to become 
all things" to himself and others, in view of proper im- 
pression and effect ; and under all such circumstances, he 
always regarded himself as at school to vrhatever book, 
mind or other available means of preparation and im- 
provement might be found in his way. He had to look 
out of himself as well as within, and yield himself to the 
shaping influence of necessity and the circumstances sur- 
rounding him. He found laborious and often bafi[led 
effort to meet the claims upon him, the stern condition of 
all growth and every thing like progress. 

The earlier nucleus forms of these sermons date so far 
back in the personal history of the author, he may be un- 
conscious in many instances of the extent to which he may 
be indebted to others, for the scope and spirit, and even 
the shape and coloring, of his own thoughts. Amid the 
ever varying vicissitudes and appliances of laborious self- 
instruction, he must have been laro^elv indebted to others, 
for the sources and inspiration both of thought and lan- 
guage. He believes, however, from the best means of 
judgment in his power, particularly his general habits of 
study and composition, that the plan and prosecution, the 
loo'ic and lanoaiao^e, of each discourse, are so essentiallv his 
own and unlike any other productions with which he is ac- 
quainted, as to stamp upon the whole series those distin- 
guishing features of mental aptitude, constituting all that is 



10 



PREFACE 



usually meant by originality of conception or style in the 
instance either of the speaker or writer. Occasional imita- 
tions and resemblances, more orless tangible, and applying 
alike to forms of thoiioiit and lano^iao-e, in a sentence or 
even paragraph, here and there, will no doubt be detected 
by the critical reader ; and when he recollects how and 
by what means and methods these discourses have assum- 
ed their present form, he will be the more readily able to 
account for them. Such probable resemblances, the re- 
sult of his earlier habits of study, the author has no wish 
to disoruise or disavow. He is rather inclined to allow 
criticism the benefit of any prominence they can be made 
to assume. He affects in such connection, no creative power 
of thought or independent force of conception, and fully 
admits his deep indebtedness to other minds for the fur- 
niture of his own. It will be proper to add, more cir- 
cumstantially here, that the early and long-continued 
habit of reducing to writing, as the means of self-improve- 
ment, his first vivid impressions^ in the shape of notes and 
strictures, upon nearly all the more important subjects and 
topics in the entire range of his reading, and freely using 
such notes and memoranda, as he found it convenient or 
necessary in his pulpit preparations, may have betrayed 
him into the use of occasional trains of thought and forms 
of expression to be met with in the works of others, and 
with regard to which he has now no means of judgment or 
correction, as he sought only to preserve thought ; and in 
doing so, relied entirely upon impression and memory. 
The author thinks it quite likely that defects of this kind, 
incidental to his earlier habits of application, may, in many 
instances, have escaped his notice. Hoav far such occa- 
sional blemishes, if met with, should affect the character 
of the general subject or train of thought, as fused in the 
mind of the author and elaborated in the following dis- 



PREFACE . 



11 



courses, is cheerfully left to the judgment of the well 
informed reader. 

The author's own ideal of fitness and excellence, mean- 
while, has always in every instance furnished the start- 
ing point, path, and goal. In the preparation of his dis- 
courses, he has always been careful so to idealize and 
vivify the sermo interior- — the body of thought — the or- 
ganic whole — as to make the vision his own, in con- 
tradistinction from all others. He has always labor- 
ed so to conceive and improvise the plan of his dis- 
courses, as to give them, in his own mind at least, the 
force of a scenic representation. The author has for 
more than thirty-five years industriously sought after and 
bowed low before the model forms and aspects of thought 
in the instance of other minds, but he has not allowed 
the aids for which he is indebted to others, to displace or 
supercede the agency and activity of his own mind ; and 
by how far he has turned such aids to new accounts and 
uses, he cannot but regard himself as entitled to be heard, 
as an original, separate witness. If in any instance he 
has availed himself of such subsidiary helps, without 
opening new sources of thought and feeling, and present- 
ing new traits of observation, and thus giving them new 
practical uses, he has done so most unconsciously and 
without intention. All such means and methods have 
been resorted to, as merely lateral and adjunctive, and in 
no sense more than tributary to the controlling current of 
his own thoughts. In this way and for such purposes, the 
thickly noted page and record of the past and present, 
have been constantly appealed to. Standing in his own 
right of inquiry and search, the author has never hesi- 
tated to shake hands with nature, books, the circum- 
stances of the times, and his own position, that he might 
the better fulfill his mission and make it be felt. And he 



12 



PREFACE. 



believes the light thus reflected from others, has been 
with such variations, if not increase, as to justify the ex- 
tent and manner of its use. 

Intense sympathy with mind and thought in others — 
the " mighty shapes and mightier shadows" of intellect, 
as found in the works of the dead and achievements of the 
living — furnishes no presumption certainly of want of 
self-reliance and independence on the part of the mind 
of which it is affirmed. The mind may have center and 
steadfastness of its own — may have proper balance of 
power among all its faculties — may have ability faith- 
fully to represent truth and nature — may have an eye 
of its own, and see things in its own light — may have a 
mechanism and texture of thought peculiar to itself, 
and yet be so influenced by fellowship with other minds, 
as to receive from them constant impulse and direction, 
even Avhen no note is taken of it, and no such result 
dreamed of. Who does not know that the mind re- 
ceives spring and momentum, in a thousand forms, from 
causes and sources, and has its wants supplied by in- 
numerable means and methods, unnoted and unobserved 
at the time, or subsequently ? There is mental product 
without knowing whence or how. 

The expansive tendency thus given to the mind, vi- 
gorously astir under the impelling circumstances of 
spontaneous aspiration, or exigence and want, shows 
how truly the thoughts of others may color and in- 
vigorate our own, while the difiusion and interpenetra- 
tion of our own throughout the whole mass, is too en- 
tire and controlling not to give essential insulation and 
independence with regard to all others. The power and 
habit of perceiving things in a manner different from 
others, and yet true to facts and nature — such mental 
production bearing the impress of what is peculiar to 



PREFACE 



13 



the mind producing it — is the true and only originality 
of sound philosophical criticism, and the original interest 
of any production is limited to this distinction, and 
should be determined by it. The pages of Jeremy 
Taylor and Bishop Hall, Robert South and John Milton, 
may tend directly to increase the power both of thought 
and expression, mthout any implication of servility or 
dependence. 

The author has been thus explicit on this topic for 
several reasons, in which his readers have an interest 
as well as himself. First, as it regards himself and the 
sermons found in this volume, the peculiar if not en- 
-tirely unique circumstances under which they received 
body and form, suggested the propriety of enabling the 
reader to perceive that while the author has received 
impression and inspiration from the might and influence 
of other minds in their production, these discourses, 
such as they may be found to be, are his own ideal 
creations, both as it regards the tout ensemble of their 
structure and the great mass of their elementary de- 
tails. In the next place, without reference to himself, 
the author has felt disposed to suggest caution with 
regard to the commonly received tests and standards 
of judgment on this subject, by which profoundly orig- 
inal productions are often pronounced mere imitations, 
because in them, forsooth, are found occasional and 
more or less striking resemblances to the productions of 
other men ! And on the other hand, it is not imcom- 
mon to meet with works, commended as highly original, 
merely, it would seem, because so utterly common-place, 
both in matter and style, as not to remind the critic of 
anything of note he has ever seen or heardbefore! And 
finally, it has been the wish of the author to attract to 
this subject the attention of the ministry, and especially 



PREFACE. 



the younger divisions of the ministry in his own church. 

He greatly fears the popular sophisms and dogmas of a 
false taste and bastard criticism, are rapidly tending to 
injure and reduce the power and influence of the pulpit. 
Its incumbents are required to adjust themselves to 
rules and conformities, whose only tendency is to place 
the pulpit, as an engine of influence, in the hands of 
those v/ho have no just conceptions of its mission and 
functions, and who are withal, perhaps, interested in 
giving it misdirection. These suggestions are at least 
worthy of careful examination. The author does not 
regard himself as having more than a common interest 
in them, and beyond this has no wish to claim their pro- 
tection or deprecate consequences. His sole object is to 
direct attention to the fair and the just in relation to a 
mooted question, connected with the rights and interests 
of the pulpit. 

Of the true character and relative value of these dis- 
courses, the author, on many accounts, can scarcely be 
considered as a competent judge. In his own personal 
history they are the memoirs of thought and feeling, 
as belonging to the past rather than present. They 
received form and expansion, and were prepared and 
preached, as he thought and felt, and in view of resource 
and opportunity, at the time. They are the living type 
of his actual conceptions and emotions, in preparing for 
the pulpit, and before the audiences to which they w^ere 
addressed. There is not a paragraph in them, that was 
not written for im.mediate use before an audience soon 
to be met. There is not a thought entering into the 
substance of any one of them, that has not mingled with 
the devotions and been part and parcel of the worship 
of assembled thousands. 

Such as they are, and whatever reception they may 



PREFACE. 



15 



meet with, they exist in deep and vivid association with 
the past ; and regard for the living, and reverence for 
the dead, who have in various forms asked for their 
publication, have mingled with other reasons in with- 
holding the author from any attempt to change their 
character. Connected as they are with years of toil and 
study — with the interests and activities of a severe and 
hazardous course of self-training^they have become 
invested with a melancholy traditional interest, about 
which the heart (however the judgment may demur) 
will have its superstitions and exact indulgence. As a 
part of himself — the renewal of his past history — afford- 
ing lessons of fidelity to the real and actual in the drama 
of life— linkinor thouo-ht and feelino: to scenes, events and 
persons, dear to the heart's best memories — the author 
cannot consent to change them. Left to his own judg- 
ment, he should have withheld them from the press, but 
change them he cannot. He would much rather sup- 
press them. 

To furnish the reader with the means of correct judg- 
ment, is the sole object of this preface. How the suc- 
cessive elements of thought gained lodgment and force 
in the mind, and put on their final livery — where were 
found the germs of thought, or how suggested — what 
gave life and pulsation to reflection and feeling, and led 
to development and individuality — others, with the state- 
ments of this preface before them, can perhaps explain 
better than the author. He only knows they were pro- 
duced in sympathy with a thousand forms of interest and 
excitement ; and to vfhatever extent they may be found 
pervaded and vitalized by a oneness, a continuous unity 
of conception and idiom, must be traced to the fact, that, 
amid all the moods and phases of activity and effort, in- 
terest and excitement—that, while availing himself of 



16 



PREFACE. 



all tlie objective aids within his reach — he has always 
sought to give everything of the kind proper subjective 
basis in the clear perceptions of his own understanding, 
however humble or unimportant they may have been. 

In the structural plan of his sermons, the author has 
aimed at substance rather than form, and sympathy 
with the general mind rather than an appeal to the fas- 
tidiousness of cultivated taste. It has been his wont to 
blend, as far as he might, the vivid and impressive with 
the more occult and profound. Judging others by him- 
self, he has preferred fruit and foliage, in natural com- 
bination, believing this to be the true simplicity of style ; 
and, without substitutinsf shadows for thino^s, he has not 
forgotten how necessarily they coexist, both in nature 
and the human mind. He has been careful, also, while 
dwelling largely upon the more important truths of the 
Gospel, not to give undue expansion to any one element 
or topic, or to press any single truth, to such over- 
balance in the system, as to destroy the proper effect of 
others — of the whole. 

The selection of the discourses composing this volume, 
has been made by the persons calling for their publica- 
tion. There is not a sermon in the volume that has not 
been called for by special and formal application. 

As these sermons were written for the author's own 
exclusive use, in his character of preacher, the right, 
and indeed necessity, of explanation, would seem to ex- 
tend to whatever there may be about them in any way 
unusual or peculiar ; and he would regard it as by no 
means a recommendation of these discourses, were he 
unable to show reasonable motive for any serious depar- 
ture from established pulpit usage. He feels obliged, 
therefore, to ask attention to one or two additional 
items. 



PREFACE. 



17 



The author has long been impressed with the idea — 
perhaps he should say conviction — that the force and 
value of pulpit instruction are greatly lessened by the 
restraints and mannerism of pulpit style, arising mainly 
perhaps from undue attachment to creeds, confessions 
and church formularies, as the tests and standards of 
truth and uniformity among different denominations of 
Christians, and the vicious standards of critical judg- 
m.ent already adverted to. The natural, manly and 
varied, freedom of expression found in the Bible, and 
preserved in greater or less degree in all its translations 
into different languages, is laid aside, and gives place to 
the staidness and precision of an exclusive technical 
phraseology, and often having all the essential charac- 
teristics of a mere pulpit patois. And on this account 
alone, with or without reason, the pulpit too often be- 
comes to the hearer a mere limbo of common-place, 
from which he turns away with indifference, if not dis- 
gust. It is felt not to be true simplicity, either of 
thought or language, and is therefore rejected by the 
popular taste. Entertaining such an opinion, it is pos- 
sible the author may have erred in preferring a some- 
what abrupt and irregular, but, as he believed, true ver- 
nacular freedom and catholicity of expression. 

So far as mere style is concerned, but slightly heeding 
the laws and fetters of usage, he has been ambitious only 
of clear and strong impression — force rather than re- 
finement. Style, under any circumstances, is but the 
expression of mind, of thought ; and will, of course, and 
by all means should, vary with the development, condi- 
tions and force of the one and the other — the necessary 
vicissitudes of taste and judgment. And is not the 
pulpit entitled to the benefit of such change ? for bene- 
ficial it must be, as it is founded in a law of our nature. 
1* 



IB 



PREF A CE. 



Should not the pulpit avail itself of the possible advan- 
tage resulting from such change, as it is manifestly 
developed in the ever-varying activity of the human 
mind ? 

For mere party or sectarian technology, whether as 
met with in books or the pulpit, the author has never 
had any respect. The verbal encrustations, so often if 
not generally disfiguring thought in the pulpit, and 
giving it at best a fixed and statuesque air, he has 
always regarded as a grave defect, or to say the least, 
as unfortunate. The necessarily transitive and fluxional 
character of language and style, requires a correspond- 
ing versatility of use and application in the pulpit. 
From inattention to this fact, it need not be shown to 
what extent style in the pulpit must conform to a more 
or less mechanical standard, and become in fact a mere 
caput mortuum, instead of living instrument, of in- 
fluence and action. The least that can be said on the 
subject, is, that exclusiveness and caste of style in the 
pulpit, necessarily lead to sameness, and very generally 
terminate in dullness and turgidity. Should the author 
be in error on this subject, what he has submitted will 
at least explain why he has felt at liberty to diverge 
somewhat from the common path. Simply to be under* 
stood on the subject, is all he aims at or has in view. In 
the instance of men of superior parts and attainment, or 
of rare zeal and piety, the evil in question is to a great 
extent neutralized ; but, in the great plurality of in- 
stances, it is to be feared it operates the full amount 
detriment suggested above, and cannot be unworthy 
of notice. 

As these discourses were not originally written for 
the press, and have been subjected to no revision in this 
respect, each must be considered as complete in itself, 



PREFACE. 



19 



although something like organic relation, or harmony 
of substance and parts, will be found to connect the 
whole series. The reader, however, will find it a land- 
scape rather than architectural grouping, and will meet 
with the relations of a forest rather than field-scene. 
Expecting to be heard not read, the object in the prepa- 
ration of these sermons was to give form and voice to 
the thoughts and impressions, the convictions and feel- 
ings, of the preacher, in a way best calculated to arrest 
and impress the hearer. 

Of these discourses in another aspect, affecting their 
subject matter, it is proper to say, that, honestly availing 
himself of all the lights he could discern in the firma- 
ment of truth about him — ability faithfully to represent 
truth and nature, the word and the works of God, 
together with the relations and interests involved, has 
been an aim from which he has never swerved. He has 
always studied and preached the character and claims 
of Christ as the great influential center of the Christian 
system — the true fontal element of all pulpit instruc- 
tion. To the Bible he has turned without doubt or 
question, as the unerring, unimproveable standard of 
truth and goodness. To these great central points he 
has directed attention, as showing the relation and coin- 
cidence of all the different parts of the entire system ; 
and this general view has given unity and direction to 
all his ministrations. However imperfectly the author 
may have achieved the purposes of his ministry — and 
he feels it to have been done most inadequately — ^to 
magnify Christianity, in the estimation of all who heard 
him, and thus extend its influence among men, has 
been the text of his waking thoughts, and the dream of 
his sleep — has been the actuating principle of his stud- 
ies, and filled the whole horizon of vision. 



20 



PREFACE. 



But in all this the aiitlior would not, cannot glory ; I 
nor dare he oiler himself as an example to others. He ^ 
is but too deeply conscious he has not been all that a \ 
Christian preacher should be. To the firmness and \ 
zeal of resolved consistent piety, at which he has con- i 
stantly aimed, should have been added a devotion and 
consecration — a more vfidely-diffused and pains-taking 
activity to become- all things to all men," that more 
might be saved — *to which he can lay no claim. While 
he has this to regret, however, he has acquired the right 
of saying, that, in the pulpit, to say nothing of a life of 
study and preparation for it, he has never trifled with 
himself or his mission — has never been indifferent or 
insincere — has never sought his own distinction or ad- 
vantage, nor has he ever **lied to the Holy Ghost,'' by i 
an affectation of claim, to which he knew himself not to | 
be entitled. 

Transferred from the pulpit, as a regular vocation, by 
authority of the church, to other fields and scenes of 
labor, and for the last twelve years unable, except very | 
limitedly, to perform its functions, from a diseased con- 
dition of the throat and loss of voice — whether busied 
with his books and pen, toiling am.id the collegiate 
cares of the lecture room, or burdened with univer- 
sity oversight — he is conscious of no ambition or aspi- 
rations, unconnected with the great mission of the 
pulpit. 

It is proper to state, however, that, owing to the almost 
entire engrossment of his time and energies in a differ- 
ent direction, the results of study and application for 
the last fifteen years of his life, have been brought to 
bear upon his pulpit preparations and performances 
very irregularly and inadequately. The sermons in 
this volume, with the exception of inconsiderable addi- 



P R E F A C S . 



21 



tions, all antedate the period in question. A series of 
sermons, more or less perfectly written out during this 
period, on the general plan of those now published, 
together with others of the same period and of 
earlier date, may or may not be given to the public in 
future. 

As the author always relied upon thorough study with- 
out committing his discourses for delivery, he is com- 
pelled to suppose there will be a manifest difference 
between these sermons as read and as heard from the 
pulpit. This difference is, to some extent at least, readily 
accounted for. In the instance of the writer and reader, 
the contact of minds is less direct and perfect than in 
the case of speaker and hearer. The hearer meets with 
much to sustain the tone of thought and feeling, of 
which the mere reader is deprived. In the instance of 
the former, there is a kind of electric transfusion of feel- 
ing not to be expected in the latter. In the one case 
there is much to impress and attract, not to be met with 
in the other. Force and meaning are found in the 
speaker, which are wanting in the writer. With the 
speaker and hearer, the eye, hand, action, intent gaze 
and intuitive sympathy, all have an emphasis unknown 
to the mere writer or reader. Between the latter, the 
distance is greater. 

It requires but a very slight acquaintance with the 
laws and aptitudes of mind, to know that on the score of 
warmth, interest, sympathy and impression, the speaker 
has greatly the advantage over the v/riter, and the 
hearer over the reader. The personal, in speaking and 
hearing, is found to be very different from the ideal in 
writing and reading. Among other things, a fullness 
and varied amplitude, and even rhetorical exaggeration 
of phrase and style, are not only admissible, but to some 



22 



I» R E F A C E . 



extent necessary, in speaking, beyond the license of good 
taste in compositions intended only to be read. 

It is not unlikely, therefore, that those who have ex- 
pressed a wish to read the author's sermons in the form 
in which they were preached, may be disappointed. The 
influence of high wrought feeling — the comment of look 
and tone, of action and expression, on the part of 
preacher and audience — together with other causes to 
which we have asked attention— may have led to an im- 
proper estimate of their value, or that value may have 
been really, as well as relatively, greater in the one case 
than the other. For, to say nothing of frequent impromptu 
additions and variations — the unstudied inspiration of the 
preacher at the moment, even when the language is the 
same — the intensified thought and feeling of public ad- 
dress, are of necessity lost when the discourse is but 
simply read. Sermons, therefore, intended only for the 
pulpit, must be seen from the press in unfavorable and 
deteriorating lights ; and in giving to the press these 
''Sermons from the Pulpit," the author is fully aware 
of the risk he incurs in this respect. 

These remarks are general, and are not expected to 
derive any additional significance from the author's 
manner as a public speaker, about which he knows but 
little, and to the good, bad, or indifierent character 
of which, he certainly never gave an hour's thought 
in the course of his life. The irrepressible emotion 
with which he has always appeared before an au- 
dience, has never allowed him to think of manner when 
in the pulpit, and rendered it useless for him to do so 
out of it. 

In a series of separate independent discourses (prepar- 
ed as these have been) designed for immediate effect, 
addressed alike to the mind and the heart, constructed 



PREFACE. 



23 



with a view to double tendency — to convince and excite, 
to win and wield an audience — the reader, while he has 
a right to expect in them unity of aim and structure, the 
native vigor and self-support of truth and argument, can 
scarcely expect the completeness and harmony of parts, 
the finish and proportion, resulting from habits of more 
regular study and continuous composition. As it re- 
gards the substance — the theological matter of this vol- 
ume — it is believed the reason accompanies the show 
of thinofs throuo^hout, and that the discursive and 
perhaps somewhat unusual range of thought, will not 
be found inconsistent with strength of argument or force 
of logic, but in futhe ranee of the proper functions of 
both. 

There will be met with, in these sermons, very little of 
artistic skill, or the fashion of authorship ( neither was 
thought of in their composition) ; but as a direct and earn- 
est appeal to the highest nature of man, on a subject al- 
ways and infinitely important, it is hoped they will not 
be found without their value. If in this hope the author 
is mistaken, he has been misled by the judgment of 
friends, who have selected the sermons and demanded 
their publication. If in one aspect it should appear, that 
the author has used great freedom of thought and lan- 
guage ; in another he trusts it will be seen, that both have 
been austerely controlled by truth and good sense, and 
that he has given them alike gravitation to a com- 
mon center. 

By how far the author has accomplished what he in- 
tended, there will be found, in these discourses, no sickly 
fancy or unhealthy pulse of passion — ^no appeal to a de- 
generate taste or unworthy appliances of any kind. 
The dim and the mystic are no where affected — the 
doubtful and forbidden have been at once rejected ; and 



24 



PREFACE. 



it has been his controlling aim, to instruct, excite and 
improve, the thousands who have heard him — and, he 
must now add, the few or the many who may become 
his readers. 

Lexington, Ky., Oct. 14, 1849. 



SERMONS FROM THE PULPIT. 



SERMON I. 

CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 

^ The law shall go forth of Zion, and the vord of the Lord from 
JerusalerQ.'^ — Micah iv, 2. 

Ever and anon, amid the scenes and vicissitudes en- 
oTOssinor thono-ht and feelinof, the human mind, the soul 
of man, will break loose from the low and the perishable 
about it, and attest its own eternity. How must any sys- 
tem, therefore, ostensibly revealing the interests and 
allotments of the future, rise in majesty and brighten in 
splendor, to the conception of the anxious inquirer 1 
Immortality, guilt and danger, are intuitions of our com- 
mon nature, always felt to possess arresting attractive 
power. Unprepared then, as we must be, to resist the 
evidence, or throw away the hope, of immortality, the 
question arises — How can we forecast its issues, or deter- 
mine its conditions ? And if not, the additional question 
arises — Whither shall we turn for light and guidance? 
But we need not multiply questions to this effect : hope 
and fear, in advance of all statement or reasoning, and 
despite all opposing theories, are turned at once to the 
revelations of Christianity, as alone able to solve the mys- 
tery ; and we are thus compelled to feel, with what depth 
and intensity of meaning, a thousand facts and considera- 
tions lead us to regard the Bible as the Book and the Gift 
of God. 

2 25 



26 



CHRISTIANITI ITS NATURE, 



The general subject, thus glanced at, is unlimited in 
range ; and we scarcely know how to throw limit or boun- 
dary about what we propose to say. Apart, however, 
from all elaborate attempts at proof, and the more formal 
classification of evidence, often rendered so available in 
accrediting the claims of Christianity, in how many strik- 
ing and interesting aspects does the subject present itself? 
And at some of these, we must be permitted to glance, 
at our present interview. 

'No man can look at himself, and contemplate his des- 
tiny, as developed in the Christian Revelation, without 
becoming, even to himself, an object not only of interest 
but of reverence — for he must perceive, that, by means of 
its provisional adaptations,the least and most depressed, 
in external fortune and condition, may be the first and 
most illustrious, in all the better and more enobling attri- 
butes of our intellectual and moral nature. And no man 
can turn to this Revelation, with the calmness and candor 
of full and free inquiry, without finding it a subject warm 
with light and life, and unrivaled in truth and loveliness, 
notwithstanding its seeming self-forgetfulness and unos- 
tentatious simplicity, both of claim and manner. It is 
perceived and felt, that its influence and tendencies, quiet 
and noiseless it may be as the lapse of the stream or 
the travel of a star, never fail to exalt and dignify our 
common nature. 

And yet, strange and unaccountable as it may appear, 
in surveying the vast map of the unchristian world, and 
throwing a glance around the proud amphitheater of na- 
tions professing Christianity, we see active and thought- 
less minions ever prone to erect the present — the busy, 
engrossing present — into an era of intellectual prostra- 
tion and mad devotion, at the shrine of hopes and enter- 
prises unworthy the confidence of human nature: we 



DIFFUSIONS AXD EFFECTS. 



27 



see countless millions, formed and thirsting for happiness, 
and hurried forward by an indefinite, boundless energy 
within, fatally misled and finally wrecked in what affects 
them most — the hio-h aims and loftv rano;e of thouoht and 
action, for which they were created. 

One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the 
present age — regarded as the most enlightened the world 
has known, so far as mind and morals are concerned — 
will be found to be, that its self-deluded millions pant 
after novelty and excitement, the rare and the attractive 
in the regions of fiction and fancy, but at the same time, 
reject the one and the other, in the departments of truth 
and nature. The gloaming and badinage, for example, 
of the unnatural, the romantic, and the montrous, are 
sought with passion, and seized and devoured ^siih a kind 
of cormorant avidity, while moral paintings, fresh and 
glowing upon the canvass of time and history, true to 
nature, and connected with the interests of futurity, are 
turned from with indifference, or looked at, at best, with 
half-averted eye. 

To this rule, even the religion of Heaven forms but a 
qualified exception. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, how- 
ever — receive or reject, bless or ban, it as we may — will 
always command respect and excite solicitude. That the 
indiscretion and imbecility of the pulpit and other abused 
means of its propagation and enforcement, may, in but 
too many instances, have thrown around it an undistin- 
guishable aggregate of carricature and abuse, v\'e are 
compelled to admit; but still, like the majestic rock in 
the bosom of ocean, covered with sea weed, it continues 
to resist the heave of the tide, and the dash of the 
billow ; and every assault of infidel rage upon the one, 
resembles the wave fated to perish, whenever it rushes 
to encounter the strength of the other. 



28 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



Who need be told, that ours, not unlike its predeces- 
sors, is a vicious, fault-finding age, and especially as it 
regards the great moral relations and interests of man? 
And among other things of the kind, who need be inform- 
ed, how often and in how many forms — one while with 
stupid vulgar sneer, and again with lofty Gibbonic bitter- 
ness — we are told the Gospel is not Divine, and Chris- 
tianity uuAvorthy of credit ! We feel and regard our 
religion, however, as more true, amid and despite the 
findings of its foes. The dark and evil eye of unbelief, 
sees, or at least affects to see, nothing to admire, and casts 
upon it, or would be understood to do so, the scowl of 
unmingled disdain ; but the Christian, meanwhile, re- 
addressing himself to the examination of his faith, finds 
its disclosures and consolations, not only accredited in a 
richer appanage of general belief, but he feels a vivifying 
force of conviction, resulting from the review — a hearted 
joyousness of triumphant undoubting trust — than which 
the burst of salient foimtain upon the gaze of weary 
traveler is less grateful, and only to be exceeded by the 
fullness of rapture awaiting him, when, by the river of 
God, the trees of righteousness are first seen in the dis- 
tance, throwing their broad branches of ''living emerald 
over the pavilions of the blest ! 

But to return. The subject to which we call your at- 
tention, will place us in the center of the great field of 
prophetic vision. Prophecy is seen stretching a line of 
obscure twilight splendor from one extreme verge of the 
gulf of time to the other, resting upon intervening 
points of duration between the days of the Seer and the 
days of the drama. Prophecy does not mark and divide, 
as man might wish and his ignorance assume, by equal 
and measured intervals, the events and course of ages. 
Vast spaces remain unnoted, and we are left without any 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



29, 



special intimations to guide iis on the subject of approach- 
ing events. This we may regret ; we may invoke the 
Genius of futurity to afford us some discovery ; but, turn- 
ing suddenly from an era already past, with rapid flight 
the Angel of prophecy passes us, and reaches a point 
in the vista of ages, to be looked at by others, when 
we and ours shall long have been done with time and 
earth ! 

The Christian Revelation was not intended merely or 
mainly to gratify the intellectual curiosity and enrich the 
mind of man, but so to change his nature and reverse his 
moral condition, as to establish him in the final virtue and 
happiness of Heaven. The great volume of God's Message 
to man, begins with history, and ends with prophecy; 
and these, the historic and prophetic portions of the Bible, 
in their mutual relations and aspects, may be said to 
constitute the morning and evening light of the great Sun 
of Revelation, which, in rising, shows us on one hand the 
shadow of the past, and, in setting, traces on the other an 
outline of futurity. And it is in this way Heavenly 
truth and vision have depicted to the enraptured eye of 
faith and the Church, the past and coming glories of Chris- 
tianity. That portion of prophecy, now claiming atten- 
tion, relates to the entire of the Christian dispensation. 
It embraces the whole range of Messiah's Kingdom, from 
the period of his ascension to the throne of universal 
dominion, down to his final conquest over the nations ; 
and in attempting its explanation, at greater or less length, 
we shall 

I. XOTICE SOME OF THE MORE DISTINGUISHING ELEMENTS 
AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE GoSPEL, DENOMINATED IN OUR SUB- 
JECT, WITH DISTINCTIVE SIGNIFICANCE, THE LAW AND WORD 

OF Jehovah. In essaying this task, we cannot be in- 
sensible how feebly it must be performed. But, how- 



30 



CHRISTIANITY— ITS NATURE, 



ever we may in ourselves gravitate to sucli a result, the 
greatness of tlie subject, and the interest of the occasion, 
unless Tre lose sio;ht of the one and the other altoo-ether, 
will not allow us to be little or uninteresting. The 
treasure is in earthern vessels only, that the excel- 
lency of the power may be of God. And when the Gos- 
pel is unequal to the task of magnifying its own min- 
isters, by showing their effectiveness to be of God and 
not man, it were well, perhaps, the Gospel had no 
ministers. 

The Gospel, as a system or universal whole, although 
adumbrated by the religion of nature, and analogous to 
it in principle and provision, is, nevertheless, properly 
distino'uishable, and should be distino-uished in fact and 
form, from every other in the wide universe of mind and 
thought. It is a grand and peculiar system, resembling 
that of Xature and Providence it is true, and yet strict- 
ly sui generis, existing by itself, unmixed and incapable 
of coalescence with any other. Its basis is its own, sur- 
rounded by precincts upon which nothing human can 
trespass. It claims a divinity of origin, an essential im- 
portance, an excellence of matter, an amount of evidence^ 
a demonstration of claim, a convincing energy, an irnpress- 
iveness of appeal. Oj practical utility, to which no other 
subject or system can possibly lay claim, or, laying claim, 
must be found at fault and prove insolvent in what it 
affects. Upon each of these particulars, we beg leave to 
enlarge a few moments. 

Of the Gospel, then, ice affirm — the source of its origina- 
Hon is Divine. This is the great basement principle, the 
foundation axiom, of the Christian religion. The hand 
of God is seen in its construction. His finger is visible 
and his wisdom conspicuous in all its provisions and pro- 
portions. Springing from, it has always held communion 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS, 



31 



with, the H^.avens, and proclaimed the diyinity of its ori- 
gin by the nnmber and splendor of its triumphs. "We rely 
upon this grand truth as the corner stone, and as consti- 
tuting the bond-timber, of the Christian edifice, and but 
for which its ruins had long since been its only epitaph. 

The enemies of our religion, have essayed a thousand 
times, and in as many forms, to disprove the supernatural 
source — the Heavenly origin of the Gospel— but have as 
often failed in the attempt, and retired from the attack — 
lihe Hume wir.h Campbell, and Gibbon with Watson — 
with the names of their conquerors and the glory of the 
Gospel engraved on their broken and dismantled shields ! 
The world has been in a tempest of controversy on the 
subject of it» claims for nearly sixty centuries, and the 
result is, the religion of the Bible as a revelation from 
Heaven, is better and more unanswerably accredited now 
than it ever was before, and is infinitely more likely to 
become the religion of the world and give law and limit 
to the hopes and aims of all future generations. 

Memorably indeed, upon trial, have all other systems 
failed. Of what avail, may we ask, have been the vague 
guesses sent forth from time to time, like [N'oah's dove, 
from the frail ark of man's unaided reason, to hover over 
the dark and unfathomed abyss of the future ! Plato, 
we know, furnished the world with golden dreams ; So- 
crates, with the lessons of philosophic meekness ; Homer, 
with all gorgeousness of fiction ; Archimedes, with the 
unadulterated calculations of physical truth — and so of 
others and the rest : btit still the wayward and tossing 
vessel of the human soul, was left upon a sea of strange 
and untried expectation. And it was at this fearful, and 
yet niost befitting crisis, that Revelation threw the full 
sunrise of immortality over our world, the undying light 
of which remains to guide us still ! 



32 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



The great object of the hestowment of the Gospel, as the law 
and word of God, was the happiness of man. To effect this, 
no other system, after ages of trial, had been found com- 
petent. All those means and expedients of which man 
could avail himself, had failed, signally failed to furnish 
him with satisfactory manifestations of the character of 
God, the medium of access to, and method of acceptance 
with, him. And all had equally and fearfully failed, in 
furnishing the laws and rules of morality, an accredited 
code of morals ; in the love and practice of which, man 
might feel himself secure, and hope for the mercy and 
friendship of Heaven. 

To insist upon no other test in this connection, we 
might, in numberless forms, advantageously estimate the 
superior value and excellence of the Gospel, by comparison 
and contrast. Here, however, we must substitute gene- 
ralities for details. To institute the comparison fully, and 
bring out the contrast in clear relief, can it be necessary that 
we introduce you to the Pagan Pantheon, or amuse you 
with the dreams of philosophy. Is it necessary that we 
make Infidel, and even Pagan folly, blush, by citing you, ob 
the one hand, to the Priesthood, say of Baal — the shrines 
of Moloch and Saturn — the groves of Yenuis and Tham- 
muz — the rites of Pan and the revelino-s of Bacchus ; 
or, on the other, to the vaunted illuminations and self- 
sufficient arrogance of the v/isdom, the scribe and the 
disputer of this world? 

We are aware, that Infidel sophistry has often essayed^ 
in this way, to accomplish the adverse result, of obscuring 
the glory, and discounting the value of Christianity ; but 
she has, in every instance of such attempt, by an invin- 
cible array of evidence, thrown around her the rays of 
her own divine effulgence, like a fount of living splendor, 
and left her assailants merged m their appropriate, in 



DIFFCrSION AND EFPECTS, 



33 



hopeless, insignificance ; while the Gospel of the Grace 
of God, steadily descending the stream of ages, is not 
onlj triumphant with regard to the past, but with ''hold 
and heritage in distant time, is destined to reach the 
latest generations, ''forever famed, forever loved.'' 

It is equally true of the Gospel, that the excellence of its 
matter — the subject-matter of its revelations — vindicates the 
co?iclusion at ichich ice have arrived. The product of the 
wisdom of God, it bears the impress of all his perfections. 
Its every ray of light, is a Heaven-transmitted beam, 
to the human understanding. The preeminent value and 
high moral loveliness of what it reveals and inculcates, 
must be obvious to every one, and if it be not excellence 
itself even, we have yet to learn the meaning of the term 
and the nature of the thing. It is indeed the veritable 
apotheosis of all that is lovely in the intellectual uni- 
verse — an exhibition of heavenly worth — of the temper 
and conduct of the world above, and to which we aspire. 
In theory, it is a revelation of Deity ; and, in practice, the 
nearest possible assimilation to him. It diffuses "the 
savor of life '' throughout the whole range of its sway, 
the vast empire of truth and virtue upon earth, giving 
value and interest to all that belongs to duration and 
extension, without limit and without end. It places the 
interests of time in abeyance, and opens upon the soul 
the objects of immortality. 

It is a system perfect in model and perfect in move- 
ment. It needs no touch of human perfection, or earthly 
finish. The Gospel was given to man to be studied and 
understood, to be received and conformed to, not altered 
or amended, by way of improvement or greater attraction. 
Stamped with the impress, and glowing with the ener- 
gies, of immortality, Heaven gave it to the children oi 
earth and time, to save them from sin and hell — and not 



34 



CHRISTfA?JITT ITS NATURE, 



to fight and quarrel about, curse and deny, as but too 
many Christians, and all Infidels, do. We only lower, 
we but humiliate, this stupendous theme, whenever we 
essay to describe the sublime revealments and essential 
glory of the Gospel, It is a theme too high and holy — 
too full of reverent, of hallowed, monumental interest — 
it is too lofty and lovely — its developments of power 
and magnificence, are too expansive to admit of descrip- 
tion ; and we must leave them to challenge the immor- 
tal homage of virtue, and compel the reverence of all 
time. 

The evidence tending to its authentication^ as a revela- 
tion from Heaven^ lohether internal, external or collateral^ 
is abundant and indubitable. No proposition in morals, 
no fact in history, has ever been better, and but few half 
as well and credibly, sustained, as the facts and assump- 
tions, the outline and details, of the Christian system. 
We boast not merely a competence, but perfect opulence 
of Heaven-furnished and conclusive proof here, and the 
only difficulty is to know where to begin and how to 
select. 

There are profound and learned proofs and reasons, 
deep and varied in application and bearing, to satisfy the 
learned and cultivated ; and there are plain and simple, 
and yet equally forcible proofs, to satisfy the plain and 
less enlightened. There were prophecies, for example, 
many and special, fulfilled in the personal history of Jesus 
Christ, to satisfy his countrymen and contemporaries of 
the Divinity of his mission, to say nothing of his mira- 
cles and other proofs. And there are prophecies, con- 
cerning himself, his Church, the Jews, and other nations, 
either fulfilled, or in course of fulfillment, to satisfy the 
ingenuous and inquiring of all ages and nations, and of 
whatever training or prepossession. 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



35 



Christianity is a system, exhibiting in its nature, evi- 
dence and claims, not only an uncompounded oneness, 
but a most striking distinctiye uniqueness of character. 
So true, as to preclude every thing false ; so wise, as to 
teach and recommend nothing foolish ; so great and good, 
as to have nothing weak or wicked about it. In its ele- 
ments and issues, it is above the virtue of vicious men. 
It equally transcends the invention of good men, and 
could not be the production of either. Angels, to produce 
it — a supposition, by the way, infidelity could not even 
hypothecate without borrowing from Christianity — an- 
gels to produce it, by the inevitable implication of false- 
hood, must have become devils by the deed ; and devils 
producing it, as upon the Jewish hypothesis of the Tal- 
mud, must have been ibols, beyond all human example, 
by giving birth to a system necessitating their own doom 
in hopeless preclusion from God and virtue. To name 
such absurdities, is to refute them. Still the refutation 
is valuable, in the proportion they may have been relied 
upon to discredit the claims of the Gospel. 

The weight of evidence increases at every step. Let 
any man honestly and earnestly, with calmness and can- 
dor, examine the claims of the Gospel, and he will feel 
conviction of its truth penetrating the understanding, and 
thrillinor throuo^h him like a barb 1 Truth after truth, 
in mingling efiPulgence, will break in upon the mind, as 
star at twilight flashes forth on star, lighting up the 
camps of Heaven ! The skeptical and wayward may 
resist — may hypothecate schemes and methods of indem- 
nity and escape — but in vain has the self-love of infidelity, 
or the sickly charity of Utopian reformers, separated 
punishment from sin ; in vain have they dreamed and 
declaimed away the place of final evil. All this is but 
to demur to their destiny, without being able to avoid it ; 



n 



CHRISTIANITr— ITS NATURE, 



for dreaiA or fable as they may, it will not do ; amid it all, 
that destiny comes dimly and darkly rolling on, and the 
avenging gleams of the hell they had denied, are thrown 
in agonizing cross-light, athwart their feeble glimpses 
caught of heaven, few and far between — and the only 
resource of unbelief, in the rejection of the Gospel, is not 
to think at all ! 

The evolution of its principles and provisions speaks the 
same language. Christianity has invariably displayed its 
might and immortality — its indestructibility and unfailing 
power — in behalf of man; and, if it be not important to his 
happiness, the alternative is irresistibly pressed, that God 
and eternity are but trifles — -Heaven and hell the veriest ex- 
pletives ; and hope and virtue are thus let loose, at once and 
forever, from all the eternal moorings of right and wrong. 

Obdurately stupid, and beyond feeling, must be the de- 
pravity of the man, who can survey the nature and claims 
of the Christian religion, without the deepest concern — 
without, in the deep travail of his spirit, feeling the 
rising energy of a sigh— high as Heaven, deep as hell, 
and enlarged as the universe — to become interested in it. 
For he must perceive, that Christianity reveals and 
accredits the noblest good — unutterable wonders — immor- 
tal hopes and issues, momentous as God and infinity can 
make them ! You may essay to doubt, ypu may in terms 
deny, but truth and nature remain ; and what but the 
Gospel, we ask, gives birth to those mighty hopes and 
fears, which gather over the soul like angels' wings, 
as now and again it is felt to be darkened by a shadow 
no body projects, and tossed by a tempest no order 
governs ! 

The vicious and wayward may resist these convictions, 
may attempt to disarm them of their force ; but, in spite 
of themselves — in spite of infernal coadjuvancy — like the 



DirFUSIOX AND EFFECTS. 



37 



eternal lights of the septilcher, they continue to burn un- 
extinguished in the wasted heart I Hope and fear alter- 
nate in the bosom, and, ever and anon, rush quivering 
over all the cords of the sotil I The one fixes -attention 
upon the harps of the blest, echoing the harmonies of 
Heaven ; the other, opening an ear to the wail of the lost, 
dirging the perdition of undone eternity ! 

Tae Gospel appeals to the mind and heart, with an illu- 
nmiation and efficacy unknoicn to any other system, or in 
any other department of inquiry. Christianity has never 
been left without witness. She has an advocate in the 
bosom of everv htiman beinof. Conscious remorse with- 
in becomes the omniscient accuser of crime. The offen- 
der's own heart executes vengeance upon him. The eye 
shrinks from the appalling brightness of the vision. 
Conscience shakes her terrific scepter and utters her 
monitory voice. Stung with compunction, keen as the re- 
morse of the damned, how often do the rejectors of the 
Gospel feel it to be true even while the stain of its de- 
nial is coloring on the lip, and burning there the brand 
of their chosen infamy. Self-accusation rebukes them 
into insignificance. Self-distrust drives them, in forms 
often unknown to themselves, to the throne and succor 
of Omnipotence. They vaunt indifference it may be ; 
but how often is it only to hide the scorpion pangs of 
a worrying hell within, as the daylight of eternity is 
felt to disturb the sleep of sin and the slumbers of 
crime. 

The Gospel speaks to man in a tone that plants the 
soul in the eye and the ear. Its lessons are heard with 
a disturbing sense of insecurity and alarm. Its appeal 
is like the energy of the tempest, giving proof, in its ir- 
regular and untameable rushings, of descent from a re- 
gion above the reach of man ! Turn to the listening. 



38 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



anxious thousands, in whose midst you have often heard 
its appeals, and you will at once learn our mean- 
ing. 

We have a demonstration of all this in the injluence the 
Gospel exerts upon the character and destiny of man. It 
is his only hope. This was the only haven, un visited 
by wrath and ruin,'' to which our benighted nature could 
repair, in the great primal shipwreck of hope and good- 
ness. It is man's only resource. It nerves and sustains 
him in the renunciation of sin, the practice of virtue, and 
in reverence and affection for God and goodness. It is 
almighty to succor and support. No discouragement 
can gloom — no calamity appall. Look at the early 
Christians for proof, and let a single example type the 
rest : amid the clustering horrors of impending death, 
they refused to throw incense upon the altar of Jupiter, 
and spurned alike and together the gods and the dreams 
of Paganism. It is almighty to renew and restore. It 
exerts a creative, transforming effect, upon the inner and 
the outer man. It changes even the relations of Deity. 
The offended judge becomes an affectionate father — ^the 
guilty criminal his adopted son. The long-lost image of 
God is recovered, and the life-diffusing light of his coun- 
tenance rejoiced in ; and the whole will be found inti- 
mately connected with the preestablished relations of 
order and perfection, as found in the moral government 
of God, and shown not less by its astonishing effects 
than by its resemblance to God and benevolence to 
man. 

It is not more divine in theory than God-like in issue. 
Throw back your eye upon the page of history. Look 
at the thunder of even classic Imperial Jove — the awe of 
nations, crumblino- in his molderino- hand — his altars 
desolate and his temples hymnlr-ss — without victim or 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



3^ 



worshiper — while tlie song of Bethlehem, first listened to 
amid the obscurity of the flocks and folds of Ephratah, 
is heard from the valley and the mountain, and comes to 
us wafted by every wind and floating on every breeze 1 
While the contemplative philosophy of India, the meta- 
physical lore of deep-thoughted Greece, the lofty dicta- 
tion of didactic Rome, exerted an influence feeble and 
unimportant on the few, Christianity became the heaven- 
ly enchiridion of millions, furnishing them with a propei 
estimate of earth, and placing in their hands a chart of 
the world to come ! And now the savao-e of the Anti- 

o 

podes — the distant Australian, or wandering Troglodyte, 
in his primeval woods and wilds, coeval with creation, 
bows down to her ; and prostrate nations, disjoined by 
boundless waters, bend before her altars ! 

We know of nothing to equal the high moral, the deep- 
felt, the soul -absorbing, joy of the Christian in the con- 
templation of this subject. His joy is ever new and al- 
ways enlarging, and every glimpse he has of the glory 
that burdens our theme, is like the first full draught 
of immortality to a new-made angePs thirst !" It 
is an unspoken, untyped inspiration, too intense for 
words. 

II. Let us next turn to the GosrEL, with regard to 

THE extent of ITS PROVISIONS AND ITS CORRESPONDINO PUB- 
LICATION. The Gospel provides for the moral illumina- 
tion of man, the justification of his person and the re- 
generation of his nature. It fixes the standard of duty 
and morality, offers encouragement and authentication 
to the hopes and interests of piety, aff'ords support in 
trial and adversity, and tenders final deliverance from 
the ills and evils of earth and time, to the Christian pil- 
grim, to every penitent believer iu Jesus Christ. 

These provisions anticipate the ruin and promise the 



40 



CHRISTIANITY—ITS NATURE, 



recovery of man ; and thus the Gospel, upon terms di- 
vinely conditioned and forming a part of it, provides for 
the essential happiness of every member of each succes- 
sive generation. Immortality itself is in every practical 
sense a discovery of Christianity ; and by thus revealing 
an interest which includes every other, and well nigh 
hides all others from our view, it becomes to man pre- 
eminently the one thing needful." 

Or, to give something like point and condensation to 
the revelations of Christianity in this respect, let us 
glance at a few of its provisional adaptations. Chris- 
tiaiiity^ then^ stands 'pledged for the destruction of the 
great primal curse — the sin and misery of our race and 
planet in the promised regeneration of the world. It is 
the Grospel that is to harbinger and extend inimitably, in 
every direction, the wide diffusion of universal light. 
To this light the nations have clung at different periods, 
as the last plank in the wide-spread wreck of truth and 
goodness. Heaven, in kindness to our world, has held 
it aloft for ages, as the standard of reviving virtue, the 
signal of reformation and the dawn of hope. Sin and 
misery belong to each other as cause and effect, and 
have never, by eye of God or man, been seen apart. 
Together they were born, and together they have revel- 
ed alike upon human sacrifice and human agony ever 
since. Their birth was under the same malignant star : 
the same accursed dominance has marked their history, 
and Christianity shall dictate the hymn in which the glad 
tidings of their destruction shall be pealed around the 
enlightened and renovated earth. 

Christianity stands pledged for the destruction of ig- 
norance and error. How rife, how dominant, is the one, 
while the other confounds all conception by seeming to 
possess attributes which should only belong to God and 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



41 



eternity, alike incomprehensible and without end ! The 
illumination promised in the text, however, shall become 
coextensive with universal man, and shall be perennial 
as the wants of his being and the corresponding reign 
of the Redeemer. Truth shall everywhere triumph in 
the destruction of error, and darkness recede before the 
light of Heaven. 

Then, as now, man need not go on pilgrimage in quest 
of knowledge. By a thousand ministries it shall dawn 
from Heaven like the dews of Hermon. It shall spring- 
up at our feet like grass of the earth, and every where 
its refreshing waters shall be accessible to all. 

The Gospel also provides for the destruction of violence 
and wrong, in the structure and relations of government 
and society, and the administration and management 
of their laws and interests. These — the wrong and vio- 
lence of government and society — shall be destroyed ; 
partly by the mild and bloodless triumphs of the Gospel 
and partly by the just judgments of Heaven. The 
Gospel penetrating every where, as indicated by the 
finger of prophecy, shall silently but securely operate its 
destined functions of renovation ; and in the instance of 
the incurably obdurate, Messiah will grasp unpitying 
vengeance with both his hands, and blight with final 
curse the agents and instruments of the one and the 
other. 

In failure of the means provided by Christianity to 
accomplish the divine purposes in ine aestruction of 
these evils, they will meet the retribution they have 
challenged, in the revolt of determined millions, rising 
and uniting in the avengement of injured right, resist- 
less as the career of the tempest or angry swell of 
ocean — the antagonism of adverse agencies thus uniting 
to bring about the same benign result ! 
2* 



42 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



War and bloodshed^ too^ as applied to nations — the ends 
and objects^ whether of legalized or 'predatory slaughter-^ 
shall be superceded by the realization of the hymn of Be- 
thelem — on earthy peace^ good-will toward men.^^ The 
moral wrong of war, applies only to the individuals and 
nations provoking the result, and not to all who may be 
engaged in it or involved in its consequences. Aggres- 
sion, without good and sufficient reason, gives the moral 
evil of war. As certainly as Christianity is true, so cer- 
tainly there will be a period, in the world's history, 
when the glory of a man or nation shall not consist in 
the number of widows, orphans and dependent suflPerers, 
doomed to tears and penury, want and woe, by the 
butcheries of this absurdly fashionable science. A sci- 
ence, the eulogium of which is written in blood and pub- 
lished in groans — at once the scourge of God and the 
calamity of nations — and such an obvious accursed barrier 
to the influence of the Gospel — that Christianity, unless 
the lips of Heaven have deceived us, can never become 
the religion of the world, until the foul stain, the damn- 
ing blot, is wiped from the calendar of time. 

The Gospel steadily aims at the extermination of this 
splendid vice of nations — this gilded curse of human 
kind — and will thus, by a single achievement, extinguish 
full one-half of the world's reputed glory ! 

The conversion of the Geyitile icorld ranks high among 
the provisions of the Gospel. During a period of sixteen 
centuries, prophecy was multiplying assurances to 
the Jewish church, that the light and advantages they 
enjoyed, and infinitely superior, under the kingdom and 
administration of the Messiah, should be extended to the 
Gentiles — all other nations as well as the Jews. And the 
whole history of miscellaneous Christendom, exemplifies 
the truth and force of prophecy to this effect. We are 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



43 



witnesses of its truth and so many living epistles in il- 
lustration of it. More than nineteen-twentieths of the 
ever-increasing myriads professing Christianity through- 
out the ^vorld, and among all its tongues and tribes, are 
of Gentile origin, and prove the truth of prophecy in 
this respect. Even our present meeting here in *'the 
ends of the earth," is among a multitude of proofs, that 
the truth of God is in course of verification, in the con- 
version of the enslaved millions of Gentilism. The 
temples of piety, the altars of devotion, the baptismal 
font, wherever seen or resorted to, tell the same truth ; 
and the only exception to the rule, is here and there a 
gloomy synagogue, pointing the hopes of the worship- 
er, prospectively, to what is already matter of his- 
tory — the advent of Messiah and the conquests of his 
kingdom. 

In the range of its spread, Christianity embraces Jew 
and Gentile without distinction. The Christian minister 
belongs to no part or people of the earth exclusively. 
He belongs alike to both hemispheres, and every people. 
The temperate, the frigid and the torrid zones, with all 
their angles and intersections, claim him equally. Every 
minister of Christ is, by his special appointment, a mis- 
sionary both at home and abroad. The world is his Alma 
Mater and mankind the Alumni. Hence St. Paul, with 
inimitable point and beauty, am a debtor both to the 
Greek and the Barbarian" — civilized and savao-e man. 
And such are the charge and embassy of every true min- 
ister of Jesus Christ. And accordingly, in view of their 
efforts and those of others, the seemingly attenuated influ- 
ence of the Gospel, is winding its way in a thousand mean- 
ders, to the point of ultimate destination. A thousand 
independent machineries of moral discipline, complete in 
themselves, and yet all parts of a universal movement. 



44 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



are in successful play. And thus the streams of virtue, 
to change the imagery, are every where washing, every 
where extending their baptism to, the barren strands of 
vice and crime. 

The recall of the Jews and their conversion to Christianity j 
after ages of apostasy and rejecti07i^ are also foretold and ipro- 
vided for. Under heavenly influence, and amid the splendor 
of Me ssi ah '^^s triumphs in the latter days, they shall appreci- 
ate the patience of God which has outlived their perverse- 
ness — his providence which provided for their return — hi& 
grace which led to it, and the glory in which it shall result, 

God's watchful care, his burning jealousy, have hov- 
ered over every paragraph of Jewish history ; and, al- 
though they have been the abjured of nations — although 
they have exhausted the curse of prophecy, in its most 
fearful repletion — although their wretchedness has been 
prolonged even into the old age of history — although the 
plow has passed over the ruins of Jerusalem, and the 
curse of the crucifixion yet lingers about Olivet and Ke-^ 
dron — although they have been visited by the last oppres- 
sions of humanity — although the mighty past of theif 
story, closing with the immortal exploit of holding their 
city against all to the last, and finally yielding, not to 
the Roman, but the vengeance of Heaven — although all 
this has been succeeded by the humiliations of a thousand 
lands, in every clime and age, still they are the regal 
people of the God of all, and he will gather them 1 

Universal and unmolested brotherhood between man and 
man^ nation and nation^ is equally a pro?nise of the Gospel, 
Men and nations shall become one in principle and one 
in policy, one in affection and one in conduct. Then 
there shall be no malevolent feeling, no ill-nature. There 
will be no exclusive bigotry, no sectarian zeal, no monop- 
oly of Heaven's care and kindness by a few, and these 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



45 



remarkable for nothing so much as want of resemblance 
to Heaven ! none of the narrow-hearted, driveling illib- 
erality, imbibed from ignorance, prejudice and party, 
and from other equally questionable and less reputable 
sources, inclining so many to place under ban and bind 
over to the communion of devils, all who cannot sub- 
scribe to the musty dogmas of the synagogue or the 
formulary, and who may happen to prefer the language 
of the Bible to that of human dictation. 

Then reason shall not, as now, be hung by the neck^ 
and common sense broken upon the wheel, because en- 
gaged in honest, independent search, to understand the 
Book of God. Then men and churches, shall not think 
of meriting Heaven, by making earth a hell all about 
them ! This state of things, shall be corrected by the 
Gospel, which shall become the great law of moral grav- 
itation, stretching beyond the vast limits of the family 
of man, and binding in the common fellowship of faith 
and feeling, the whole virtuous universe of intelligent 
beings. 

The Gospel fully 'provides for the prevalence of piety and 
purity the world over^ and the lapse of its ages concluded. 
Piety in principle and purity in conduct, shall become 
coextensive with the abode and the business of man. 

Do you ask for proof? We summon our witnesses in 
more than two hundred languages of the vocal and let- 
tered earth. But, we allow you to trifle with yourselves. 
The proof is before you. The work is now in visible 
progress, and steadily advancing to its consummation. 
While we address you, the Gospel is heard in the hut of 
the Esquimaux and the pavilion of the Persian. It is 
listened to by the Caffre and Pvarotongian. 

Its light is shining alike, amid Polynesian Isles and 
the Caribbean Archipelago. It has superceded the victo- 



46 



CHRISTIANITT ITS NATURE, 



rious war-dance amid the Lakes of the North, and kindled 
its breathings in the Cinnamon groves of Ceylon. Its in- 
fluence is felt in the mines of Golconda. Its warnings 
strike revelry dumb in the seraglio of the Mogul. And, 
as a miracle of heavenly creation, it contains within itself 
the principles of boundless increase, and shall -spread 
through every clime and under every sky, until the voices 
of piety, the harps of Zion, and the hymns of her joy, 
shall everywhere fling, to the bending Heavens and list- 
ening earth, their sweet and varied melody ! 

III. We notice briefly the agency and means, by the 

OPERATION AND INSTRUMENTALITY OF WHICH, THE GoSPEL 
WAS TO GO FORTH FROM THE PLACE OF ITS FIRST PUBLICA- 
TION, AND DISDAINING ALL LOCALITY, DIFFUSE ITSELF AMONG 

THE NATIONS. Providencc, omniscient and almighty, will 
prepare the way — Divine influence, the heart — while 
Divine truth, the Bible, shall be the grand exclusive in- 
strument of the Avorld's restoration to the image of God 
and the friendship of Heaven. The agency of this grand 
millenial change belongs to God, the instrumentality to 
the Gospel. Heaven in wisdom has selected the means, 
and will in time eff*ectuate the work. 

We have already noticed the provisional adaptation of 
the Gospel, to the removal of all the evils that afflict and 
degrade humanity, and everywhere curse and disfigure 
the face of our world. We have seen the essential na- 
ture of God and goodness, opposed to sin and misery, igno- 
rance and error, wron,^ and violence, war and bloodshed. 

In like manner, we have seen God and the virtuous 
part of the universe in alliance, to redeem the world from 
the eff'ects of these evils. 

And, accordingly, the consummation of the dispensation 
we now celebrate, will present us with the history of sin 
and misery, dislodged from earth, and winding cip in the 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



47 



gloom of interminable liell. Ignorance and error, until 
destroyed, will of course continue to resist the Gospel, 
but it will be like the waves of ocean, climbing the rocks 
in noisy war, only to break at their base, and die away 
in foam ! The claims of wrong ana violence, are already 
lessened in number and weakened in force, and may vre 
not hope from the aspect of things and the signs of the 
times, that their name and their nature are already be- 
ginning to wither from the world ? 

As sin and misery recede, ignorance and error will 
follow in their train, and the recession of these will be 
followed by the destruction of violence and wrong ; and, 
when the curse of God shall Q-iye these a o-rave, war and 
blood shall be blotted from the book of nations, and shall 
only be heard of in the ''tales of other times !" Thus 
the destruction of sin, the fruitful source of all other evil, 
like the lightning of Heaven, preparing a path for the 
thunder, shall open and applain the way for the preva- 
lence of universal holiness. The utterness of vice and 
the universality of crime, shall every where yield to the 
power of the Gospel, or resist in vain. Evil shall be 
made the precursor of good, as death precedes a resuiTec- 
tion to a glorious immortality, and worlds are reduced 
to chaos, that nobler systems may rise in splendor from 
their ruins. 

In this way, Christianity asserts its boundless applica- 
tion to the wants of man — its own proper universality 
and indefinite increase, as well as reversion to primitive 
simplicity. In proof of which she points to antichristian 
prejudices, practices and institutions, crumbling before 
the discriminating triumphs of mind, and the redeeming 
changes of the times ; nor will she pause in her triumph- 
ant progress, until the day, when the conformity and 
non-conformity of religious sectaries and church parti- 



48 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



zanship, shall expire alike, in the universal brotherhood 
of Christianity. 

Do you ask further after the means, not less than the 
agency, operating these grand results — we say, the spread 
of the Gospel will receive its direction from the purposes, 
and its impulse from the energy, of Heaven, while the 
Pulpit, the press, social intercourse and the force of ex- 
ample, shall secure its acceleration. The purposes of 
God will hold empire amid the contingencies and revolu- 
tions of the world. The energy of Heaven will, by the 
ministry of conscience and conviction, sway impulsively 
the human mind. The pulpit will multiply hearers, the 
press readers, conversation will have listeners, inter- 
course beholders, and example influence ; and these ele- 
ments of regeneration will accomplish the object we 
contemplate. As the yeasty trough of ocean operates 
its own health and purity, by means of its peculiar laws 
and conformation, so, by the laws of moral mechanism, 
comprehending the Gospel and the grace of God, the 
means and elements we have noticed in their aggregate 
and distribution, will change the world, and leaven the 
mass of its crowded millions ! 

lY. We notice, finally, the effect of the whole. 
There will be an incalculable enlargement of the Church, 
both in extent and influence — a boundless multiplication 
of its numbers and blessings. Christianity shall be dis- 
played in all her resistless splendor, and the true millennial 
glory of the latter day shall consist in the genial, unre- 
stricted influence of the Gospel, upon individual man, in 
his personal history, his social and civic relations. We 
know of no other millennium — we pray for no other. 
But^ let us look a, little further^ at the more distinctive injlu- 
ence of the Gospel^ upon the mind, the morals, and the move- 
ments of the world. 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



49 



Ai^, first, rniii l^ in view of its higher ruanifestatiom 
especially. Already the Gospel, in its expansive diffu- 
sion, is eveiT where received as the solar light of the 
philosophical world, and the mount of vision from which 
we survey the living landscape of mind and morals out- 
spreading before and about us. And as such, by an ex- 
hibition of its lofty motives and grand results, and bor- 
rowing impulse alike from the interests of time and the 
awards of eternity, it has curbed the lavrlessness of genius 
in the instance of the loftiest minds, has directed and 
purified its flame and sent it kindling to the throne 
of God ! It has pressed the phenomena of nature — ex- 
tending throughout the infinitely little and the infinitely 
great, comprehending all the gradations of earthly 
littleness and heavenly grandeur — into its own service. 
Guided by the Gospel, the field of nature and the tablet 
of the human mind become a book which all can read, 
and, reading, none dispute. 

But for Christianity, large portions of the world's his- 
tory would have been lost and its most eventful fortunes 
unknown. It is in her keeping, we are to look for the 
most valuable treasures of human lore. She has rescued 
from the grasp of oblivion, and the withering scorn 
of Pagan hate and Infidel meanness, spoils that belong 
to eternity ! It is under her guidance we see the bark 
of knowledo^e, where all beside was wreck, boomino- in 
safety over the rolling seas of time ! When nations 
without number, for ages uncounted, trod a moral waste 
and wandered on, without stumbling upon the land- 
marks of the desolation, the star of Bethelem cast its ra- 
diance over the travel of earth, and lit the wanderer 
home to God ! She did more. Kot only did she eclipse, 
by the splendor of her revelations, the wisdom of Pa- 
ganism, and give its mythology to the ridicule of child- 
3 



50 



emilSTIANITY ITS NATURB, 



liood, but in wrath slie led tlie Gaul and tlie Goth, and 
the gods of Greece and of Rome crumbled upon their 
altars — ^the startled East shrank back, and the nations 
of the West waxed pale before her deeds ! 

This work of mental regeneration is going on. 
Whether we look at individual or social man, the fire 
side or the map of nations, the families and kingdoms - 
of the earth, are submitting, one after another, to her 
gently subduing scepter, and soon the uttermost parts of 
the earth shall share the heavenly illumination, and Pa- 
gan lands of every lip and every name become the rest- 
ing place of Heaven's light ! 

Its influence upon the morals of the world^ more directly j 
has been to the same efl^ect. What the philosophy of Aris- 
totle, the dreams of Plato, the pandects of Justinian, the 
terrors of the Tarpeian Rock — representative of human 
wisdom and human control — failed to do, Christianity has 
accomplished : she has made this world wiser and better, 
enlightened and reformed it. She has done what the 
scepters and legions, the thrones, the swords and the scaf- 
folds, of all this world's masters and tyrants could nev- 
er do — that is, inform and liberalize the human mind. Re- 
gal intolerance and hereditary bigotry, political fraud and 
priestly cunning, had, age succeeding age, coined faith 
for the nations, and multiplied partizans and sectaries 
beyond all count — thick and offensive often as the frogs 
and flies of Egypt — but it was reserved for Christianity 
to make men good and resemble them to God. 

Systems, elaborated in the brain of the book-worm, _ 
gloomy Theologue,or philosophical dreamer, adverse to 
the Gospel, and doled to thousands by the mystic theorist, 
have been offered in substitution for the Christian religion ; 
while she, with simplicity and majesty, all her own, was 
content to open to the nations the Book of Life, and ask thena 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



51 



to write their names there, and live without the fear of 
death. 

Wherever the Gospel has been piibhshed, it has given 
law to public opinion, drift and direction to ethical in- 
quiry, and has, in fact, become the polar power of the 
moral world. 

Look at the illustrious consequence of this regenera- 
tion of morals, in the far-reaching diffusion of the knowl- 
edge and practice of Christianity. Men, instead of being 
given to abuses that outrage nature and degrade man- 
kind — living libels upon humanity, which is now the cha- 
racter of more than half the world — shall live as im- 
mortals and love like brethren. Professed Christians, 
and the ministers guiding them, instead of being in 
practice a parody on what they should be, shall furnish the 
credentials of genuine piety in the lessons of a holy life. 

And, as it regards the movemenis of the icorld, Christian- 
ity is identified with the growth and the glory of ages, and 
we need not be minute. Against the foes of her faith and 
her fold, with unquailing eye and unfaultering tread, she 
held her onward course, unawed and unsubdued by the 
tyrant of the cloister and the Judas of the Church, the 
intrigue of courts and the hostility of camps, hireling vil- 
lainy and diplomatic guile ! She met the perils of flood 
and field, disaster and death, vengeance and massacre, 
in their darkest forms — sometimes noiselessly extending 
her plans of evangelization among the tribes of Pa- 
o^anism, without off^erinpr resistance to her enemies, and 
at others hurhng thunder at thrones and pronouncing 
the doom of nations ! When streams of gallant blood, 
welling from the wounds of a niillion of martyrs, stained 
the scaffolds, deluged the plains, mingled with the rivers, 
or lay like dew in the valleys of Christendom, she bore, 
until further forbearance would have been cruelty to vir- 



62 CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 

tue, infidelity to her cause, and then she aimed a blow 
of Heaven's deadliest wrath, and smote her enemies 
with a thousand thunderbolts at once ! The hand of op- 
pression was paralyzed, the smile of infidelity transform- 
ed to a groan in the very act of parturition ; and, by a 
judgment powerful as fate, she compelled even her ene- 
mies to kneel and do homage to her banner ! And, still 
the same, the citadel of our faith is seen rising before 
you, with no trace of time or stain of sin — standing 
amid earth's stormy vicissitudes, like eternal Lebanon 
with her diadem of cedars pointing to Heaven, while the 
desolations of ages are piled at her feet and storied in 
her shadow ! 

Cast your eye over the world. The monuments of 
her glory reflect the luster of every star, and no wind 
blows that does not waft from the shores of the nation's 
she has subdued, some freight of charity intended 
to subdue others. In this work of God-like benevolence, 
ministers take an active part ; and, where they have been 
faithful, a recording finger shall trace their names on 
the pillars of immortality as the most illustrious bene- 
factors of their kind — the only universal philanthropists 
that ever lived, for their charity covered the wants of 
both worlds, time and eternity. By ministers here, we 
mean not those of man's taste and training, but those 
who, under divine influence and direction, understand 
Christianity and teach it from conviction — those who 
love it because they understand it, and then teach it 
because they love it ! 

This work cannot be retarded. The indestructible 
elements of rejuvenescence and immortality found in the 
Gospel, will secure the triumph and multiply the con- 
quests of Christianity, until the empire of sin is destroy- 
ed and death is swallowed up in victory — until the road 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



63 



to hell shall lie waste and desolate beneath her frown, 
and the path of life, reposing in her smile, shall be 
thronged with travelers as stars bestud and crowd the 
broad galaxy of the Heavens ! Let me but contribute to 
auo^ment this exultinof throno- of Christian immortals, 
and I will know no other ambition. Sharing in this 
lofty distinction, I have but one word for the world — I 
ask but a single boon of earth — it is, oppress me with 
no other preeminence ! Let the broken hearts I have 
spent my hfe in binding up, the wounded spirits I may 
have healed, be the throne and the evidence of my 
triumph ! — 

''Carve not a line, raise not a stone, but leave me alone with my glory!'* 

Do you doubt this triumph of the Gospel — look back, 
and see what Christianity has done, and infer the future 
from the past. However assailed by the rival powers of 
force and intellect, Christianity has met and resisted every 
shock, only to rise and reappear before her enemies, like 
the visioned war-tower of some primeval world, unmoved 
and unaffected by the changes of time, or the chances 
of doom ! If her first disciples were fated to give their 
lives to their Pagan persecutors ; dying, they overthrew 
the altars of their gods, and distant nations and after ages 
have felt the force of their example and followed in their 
steps. But Christianity will be avenged still more. Yet 
a little while, and never again shall the powerful and the 
lawless, write their caprices in blood, and seal them by 
death. Yet a little while, and persecution and oppres- 
sion, for conscience sake, shall be read as an inscription 
fit only for the gates of hell. Yet a little while, and the 
Gospel will give, to the moles and bats, those damnatory 
creeds and proscriptive edicts, that brandished over Eu- 
rope the thunders of the Vatican, and kindled the fires 
of Smithfield. A few more redeeming revolutions, and 



54 



CHRISTIANITY ITS NATURE, 



all nations shall become the great confederation — one vast 
congress of peace and justice, confidence and piety ; 
and Christianity, enthroned in the hearts of all, shall 
become immortal in the consciousness of triumphant 
virtue ! 

Do you still doubt — it can only be necessary to remind 
you, that, in arraying for combat the forlorn hope of the 
world — the introduction of a recent religion subversive 
of all others — Christianity selected her mode of warfare, 
in view of the attributes of God and the wants of men, 
and her plans were in a train of victorious evolution, be- 
fore infernal agency took the alarm, or Infidelity had 
time to heave a single fortification. The very day on 
which she selected her first ministers from the fishing boats 
of Galilee, Imperial Rome shook to her foundation, the 
Jewish hierarchy crumbled, and the Devil fell like light- 
nino: from Heaven ! And, destined to subdue the world, 
there shall be no pause in this magnificent movement of 
mercy and retribution, but era following era, as she de- 
scends the track of ages, shall add to the splendor of her 
triumphs ; until the record of a world brought back to 
God, shall crimson the only remaining blank in her ban- 
ner, and the unfolding apocalypse of her grandeur, tell 
the glory of the redeemed, and indemnify virtue for her 
toils ! 

Such shall be the increase and consummation of the 
Gospel. Its spread shall extend triumphant over the 
ravages of time, the casualties of empire, and the all- 
grasping avarice of oblivion and the grave. It is reserv- 
ed for Christianity to realize the fable of the bird of Jove : 
grasping the thunder of Heaven in her hand, and spread- 
ing her wings from sun rise to the ocean of the West, she 
throws her shadow over the world ; and the laurels of 
peaceful triumph and imperishable glory, shall encircle 



DIFFUSION AND EFFECTS. 



65 



brow, when the wreath of the Caesars shall only be 
remembered as the badge of crime ! 

In this conflict, witnessed by Heaven and earth, with 
an intensity of interest unfelt before, Christianity has had 
to struggle against. the supremacy of the world; against 
th^ representative force and majesty of empire; against 
a gigantic aggregate of every thing vicious and powerful ! 
But immutability and vissitude, men and fortime, means 
and things, have been pressed into the service of her 
victorious career, and the irresistible evidence of her final 
triumph, shall arrest the gaze of all intelligence ; and, as 
from unnumbered millions, burning with the one impulse, 
and bowing to the same scepter, earth sends up the glad 
acclaim, angels, bending from throne and sphere, shall 
hush the music of their harps, and listen to the strain — 

Now is come salvation, and the Tabernacle of God is 
with menJ*^ 



56 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



SERMON II. 

THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION AND FUNCTIONS. 

" Thou shalt stand before me : and if thou take forth the precious 
from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth : let them return unto 
thee ; but return not thou unto them. And I will make thee 

. unto this people a fenced brazen wall ; and they shall fight 
against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee ; for I am 
with thee to save thee, and to deliver thee, saith the Lord.'' — 
Jer. XV, 19, 20. 

When the prophet and bard of Israel, appealed the 
suffering cause of truth and virtue from earth to Heaven, 
exclaiming, ''It is time for thee to work, for they have 
made void thy law," the lesson taught was, that there is 
a point in the progress of human debasement, at which 
it becomes necessary for God to interfere, in view of his 
own honor and the welfare of his administration in rela- 
tion to man. 

The use we would make of the truth suggested here, is, 
that under circumstances such as surrounded the prophet, 
it is the duty of the Pulpit to interpose and arrest a 
state of things, whose manifest tendency is, to dispar- 
age and make void the law of God. In asking your 
attention to the momentous topics of duty and delinquen- 
cy, as it regards the Pulpit, we renounce and abjure all 
tests and standards, except the Word of God, and the 
evidence of facts and experience. Here we repose, and 
by these alone we propose to stand or fall. 

One of the most deceptive, and yet absurd of all the 
illusions that infest the human mind, is its proneness to 
make its own prejudices and prepossessions the standard 
of truth and right. This remark applies to the Pulpit not 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



less than to other departments of instruction and inquiry ; 
and in attempting the correction of this error, in its 
bearings upon the Pulpit, we deliberately incur the haz- 
ard of a departure from established usage, and of adven- 
turing upon somewhat, if not decidedly novel and daring 
ground. In doing this, however, we challenge the risk 
confidently, upon condition of a single indulgence on the 
part of the audience ; it is, that we may be judged, not 
by prejudice and interest, but by the laws and language 
of inspiration and common sense. We are perfectly 
assured, that the ever increasing resources and expansive 
energies of the Pulpit, can never be fully developed, and 
brought to bear upon human character and action, until 
the better informed and well-directed purposes and efforts 
of the Christian ministry, supported by the wisdom and 
grace of God, shall restore it to its original effectiveness, 
and inspired significance and application. For who can 
help perceiving, that the pulpit, as it is every where 
found blending with human enterprise and the activities 
of life, is, to a great extent, not only effete, but in rela- 
tive disgrace, with the larger portion of those who might 
be brought under its influence. This general maxim, 
will form the basis of argument and appeal, in the follow- 
ing discourse. 

Christianity is a Heaven-suggested system. Its attri- 
butes are peculiar, and its provisions extraordinary. And 
this position is not more true of the facts, doctrines and 
duties, than it is of the persons and agents, whose inter- 
ests and relations are introduced as the subject of dis- 
closure in the Christian Revelation. And among other 
things illustrative of the truth and appositeness of the 
position, we might appeal to the well known fact, attested 
alike by the consciousness of the living and the expe- 
rience of the dead, that now, as immemorially, every 



58 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



minister, every pulpit man, who performs his duty, and 
is faithful to his trust, is born, as exemplified in the life 
and fortunes of the son of Hilkiah, not only to be loved 
and trusted, but to be hated and abused. But, when it is 
remembered how worthless are blessings of the world, 
how impotent in any final sense its curses, it really boots 
but little whether the minister be loved or hated. He 
should do his duty fearlessly, and then, appealing his 
claims to Heaven and posterity, await calmly the disclos- 
ures of the coming future. 

It may be regarded as true, to a very great extent, that 
the Pulpit, in view of its appointment and purposes, is 
destined to secure the conversion, or seal the perdition, of 
the world. Conformed to the purposes of its institution, 
it is the grand moral lever of the world's elevation into 
fellowship with God ; but, degraded by the misdirection 
and imbecility of improper incumbents, it is annihilating 
piece -meal the energies of the Church, baffling the be- 
nevolence of Heaven, and throwing millions of the human 
family forward, upon ages both of delusion and crime. 
We cannot discuss this subject at large, in a single dis- 
course ; a few points only, of deeper interest and more 
vivid impression, is all we can attempt. 

The prophet Jeremiah was a native of Anathoth, a 
small village in the neighborhood of Jerusalem. He was 
the son of Hilkiah, of the tribe of Benjamin. He had a 
hereditary right to the Priesthood, apart from his pro- 
phetic vocation, both by regular descent from Aaron, and 
in virtue of his birth-place as sacred to the Priesthood. 
He commenced his prophetical career, as a special voca- 
tion, unconnected with his Aaronic descent, at the age of 
fourteen, six hundred and twenty-nine years before the 
Christian era, and continued it, with astonishing zeal, 
fidelity and success, for the space of forty-three years. 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



69 



He prophesied under four successive reigns of tlie Jewisli 
monarchy. At the time the words of the text were utter- 
ed, Jehoiakim was on the throne of Judah, then the center 
of civilization and moral culture throuo-hout the earth. 

o 

But now that we are called upon to explain the words of 
the prophet, under a different dispensation, and in a dis- 
tant part of the world, that throne has been desolate and 
without a sovereign, for more than twenty-six hundred 
years ! How solemn the thought, how impressive the 
lesson ! and the question recurs, The Prophets, do they, 
live forever ? and our Fathers, where are they ? " while, 
from the perished ashes of the sepulcher, the resting 
places of the long lost dead, echo, in melancholy cadence, 
returns the response, Where are they ?" 

In offering some remarks further upon this passage, in 
its application to the Christian ministry, we assume, 

I. That a Christian minister upon earth, especially 
IN THE Pulpit, is the messenger and representative of 
Heaven. For this purpose he is deputed and sent to the 
nations. The very terms of his mission send him out, 
as such, and thus accredited, ''into all the world." He 
has revealed to him the will and mind of God concerning 
man, and the burden of this Revelation he is faithfully 
to announce to all who hear him. He is not at liberty to 
alter, augment or mutilate, his message, in any form, or 
to any extent. He is to guard and dispense, with the 
most sacred and uncompromising jealousy, the heavenly 
treasures of wisdom and knowledge, committed to him 
in trust, for the reformation of his kind. He is God's 
mouth to man — in the language of the text, the messenger 
of Heaven to an erring world ; and in proclaiming the de- 
finite terms and weighty matters of his mission, he should 
sacredly confine himself to the instructions of Jehovah, 
and style of Heaven, furnished at his hand. God's Word 



60 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



is his text-book, the Bible his only guide, and, so far as 
principle is concerned, he is emphatically a man of one 
book. " And any serious departure from this, degrades 
his character, cancels his mission, and, but for the mercy 
of God, and the operation of other moral causes, would, 
in proportion to the extent of his influence, damn his 
flock in addition. 

He only is a real minister of Jesus Christ, who, in the 
character of his ministry, consults alike the weal of man, 
the welfare of ages and the glory of God, and is solely and 
burningly occupied with the one grand, intense interest. 
With such a minister, the faithful performance of duty 
acquires the force of principle and the fire of passion, and 
constitutes the master-charm, the foster-flame, of his be- 
ing. When in the pulpit, nothing, excepting only what 
the imperfection of our nature cannot avoid, should be 
heard from the minister, addressed to the hopes or the fears 
of man, but what would grace the lips and become the 
mouth of God. All must be in the most sacred and 
careful accordance with Heaven's teaching and Heaven's 
telling. Unflinching integrity, in relation to the high 
commissioning Source whence they derive authority to 
preach, is the great ground of all virtue and success, on 
the part of the ministry. The will and mind of God, as 
taught in his Word, should be the study of the minister, his 
great engrossing study, by day and by night. The Bible 
should always have his fond and first regards, and the Law, 
the Prophets, and the Psalms ; the Gospels and the Epis- 
tles ; these, with marked preeminence, should be his favor- 
ite classics, the grand models of constant imitation, the 
objects of ambitious emulation in all his enterprises, and 
the true goal of his wishes, in all his rivalships. And 
that minister, who does not thus distrust himself and de- 
fer to Heaven, at the same time that he has supreme con- 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



61 



fidence in his cause, is unworthy of tlie Pulpit, and shall 
inherit its curses. 

We are far from thinking, however, that the Divine 
commission of which we speak, is in any essential con- 
secutive sense, dependent on human authority. The 
weighty. Heaven-required qualifications for the ministry, 
are not likely to result from a hasty miscellaneous con- 
scription on the one hand, or systematic recruit for the 
pulpit on the other. Those who have rushed into the 
pulpit, from visionary impulse, or selfish, interested mo- 
tives, or have been conducted thither by the drill and 
cant of others, deserve sympathy it is true, but only as 
objects of pity. They are like the prophet's abomina- 
tion of desolations," found in the place where of all 
others they ought not to be, and their folly is not unaptly 
illustrated — for the analogy is prophetic — by that of 
Uzziah, who, usurping the rights of the altar, lost his 
throne, and, entering the house of God an unaccredited 
priest, went out a perpetual leper. 

In seekinof the true basis of the ministerial vocation, 
we do not appeal to the fable of prelatical succession, or 
ecclesiastical reproduction by corporate church arrange- 
ment, inconsistently derived, as we conceive, from a union, 
a marriage of convenience, on the part of the man of 
sin and mother of abominations, and but too aptly sym- 
bolized by the one and the other. We are compelled to 
reject any theory, which does not preserve the ministry 
from the very doubtful origin, the bastardy involved in 
such an assumption. 

And further, although fit and becoming, entirely so under 
proper, under ordinary circumstances, we do not believe 
the designation of men or the imposition of hands, essen- 
tially constitutive of the ministerial vocation, but rather 
lateral to it. For how often, for example and in proof, 



62 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



have tlie depraved and incompetent, even villains and 
blockheads, been the choice of the one, while the 
other, not less frequently, has led to the shameful 
mistake, the damning farce, of laying careless hands 
on skulls that could not teach, because they would not 
learn. 

Nor can it abate the evil in the least, that hierarchy 
and people, in but too many instances, loved to have it so, 
and patronized, paid well and applauded, for marring 
the image of God in ministers, the mere creatures of 
their choice and molding ! The selection and designa- 
tion of the ministry, therefore, if we turn to the high 
moral causes operating the result we assume, are the 
right of Heaven only, and the confirmation by the Church 
is but lateral and incidental. 

In a general and comprehensive sense, all men have 
an undoubted right to teach Christianity, as they have 
the right of teaching letters and science, as far as their 
competency may extend. We assume, however, that it 
is the order of Heaven, specially to select some men for 
the definite object in question. Of this we have abund- 
ant proof throughout the Scriptures. Whether we look 
at the Levitical, Prophetic or Christian ministry. Heaven 
seems to have been equally guarded in holding the same 
language, on the subject of their Divine commission — a 
language, the point and definitiveness of which cannot 
be misunderstood. Addressing the incumbents, God says, 
''I have given the priest's office unto you, as a service of 
gift." Mark here the distinctive agency in the invest- 
ment of ministerial right. 'Not only is the office given, 
but the men are chosen : He separated the tribe of Levi, 
to bear the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and to stand 
before him, and minister unto him." God said of Aaron, 
'*I know that he can speak well, and he shall be my 



AND rUNCTIONS. 



63 



spokesman." ''I ^^ill take of them for Priests and for 
Levites." 

Or, turning to the Prophetic ojffice, essentially distinct 
fi'om the Aaronic Institute, and in no way dependent upon 
it, and withal the more proper type of the Christian min- 
istry : ''I have made thee a watchman unto Israel, 
therefore hear the word at my mouth and give them 
warning." ''I will give you pastors according to mine 
own heart, and they shall feed you with knowledge and 
understanding." The priest's lips should preserve knowl- 
edge, and the people should ask the law at his mouth, 
for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts. ''I have 
set watchmen upon thy walls, 0 Jerusalem, that shall 
never hold their peace." ''I have ordained thee a 
prophet to the nations." 

All that was local and special, belonging to the Levit- 
ical Institute, or the Prophetic office, has doubtless passed 
away, and been superceeded by agency and instrumen- 
tality of a different kind ; but those distinctive principles 
in both, connecting themselves with the Divine purposes 
respecting man's recovery, and his relations as a sinful 
and yet accountable being, must be presumed to remain 
immutable in all time, and by consequence applicable to 
the Christian ministry. 

Is'or do we reach this conclusion by induction only, but 
the plain and often repeated declarations of Revelation to 
this effect, flash the lightning of their truth upon the 
mind at every step. Hear the Great Teacher of the 
Christian Dispensation, and those inspired by him. In 
that immortal example of intercession, which closed his 
ministry on earth, he says, ''As thou has sent me, so 
have I also sent them into the world." Observe the 
speciality of the mission, the true ministry is ''sent" of 
God. **Ihave chosen you:" without reference to hered- 



64 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



itary claim or tlie succession of descent. I send you 
out.'' ''He sent out others likewise." ''Go ye out." 
" Go ye, therefore " — that is, as sent. " He that receiv- 
eth you receiveth me." The ministry can only be re- 
ceived representatively, as sent by Christ ; and not so 
received, they are rejected. *' How shall they preach 
except they are sent ?" In whatever way else, certainly 
not as they ought to. "Let a man [all men] so ac- 
count of us, as the ministers of Christ, and stewards of 
the mysteries of God." "We, then, as embassadors for 
Christ." "No man taketh to himself [rightfully] this 
honor but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." That 
is, specially. The true ministers of Christ have been 
Divinely directed and set apart for the special purpose 
in question. And it is around such, and such only, 
the shield of Heaven is thrown, and celestial honors 
cluster ! 

Thus every real minister of Jesus Christ, is an accred- 
ited messenger and representative of Heaven, and stands 
charged with the high vindication of God's honor and 
Heaven's rights. Man, from motives we shall not stop 
to analyze, may call, train and drill ; may mint, stereotype 
and send out ministers — as is the wont of all denomina- 
tions of Christains, some more and some less ; but, with- 
out the concurrence of Heaven, it is all in vain. 

The want of a principled enlightened piety, must 
always cleave to them like a leprosy. They may do 
good, it is true, but will be much more likely to do 
harm. Men, however, called of God, and invested as wc 
have seen, have accepted and so taken upon themselves 
a most fearful, a most alarming responsibility. "Who 
is sufficient for these things ?" asked the ablest of min- 
isters. " Our sufficiency," says the inspired answer, "is 
of God." God says to every such watchman, "If thou 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



65 



give them not warning, their blood will I require at thy 
hands." Can the unfaithful minister, hear this and live ! 
For a Christian minister to be summoned to his final 
audit, the last great reckoning, with the weight of blood 
and crime upon his soul, is an idea so fraught with horror, 
so fatal to hope, we forbear to enlarge upon it. Most 
justly, therefore, in view of such responsibility, do the 
Scriptures assure us, that every minister is a watchman, 
a Heaven-appointed sentinel upon the walls of the mili- 
tant Sion, and the poet paints his relations well, and pen- 
cils his duty and his danger with the hand of a master, 
when, with the watchmen in his eye, and on the eve of a 
conflict with the powers of darkness, he exclaims : 

"In Heaven's high arch above his head, a glorious form appeared. 
Whose left hand bore a flambeau bright, his right a scepter reared ; 
A diadem of purest gold, his brow imperial crowned. 
And from his throne he thus addressed the watchman on his round : 
What of the night, what of the night — Watchman ! what of the 
night ? 

The myriad foe, in close array, come on to try their might — 
A night assault — and if thy trump mistake a single sound, 
I '11 hang upon these battlements, the watchman on his round!'* 

Great God ! who uncalled, unbidden, would be such a 
watchman ! 

How fearful the reciprocal attitude of the minister and 
his charge. How mysterious the corporate relations and 
affinities of the Church — the mystical body of Christ, 
instinct with the antagonizing energies of life and death, 
and vfhere every pulse, throughout the mighty circula- 
tion, throbs with destiny ! The Pulpit is ordained alikp. 
for guidance and for warning. In it every min^" .^er 
should paint for eternity, and all in attendaiK'o should 
sit for their likeness accordingly. In penning his earthly 
fold, however obscure or humble it may be, the minister 
3^ 



66 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



should recollect tliat it is for immortality, and that his 
dignity and virtue depend upon fidelity. 

Truth in the Pulpit should be like the Ionian column — 
its simplicity should charm and its strength sustain. 
Nor can the ministry want examples to this effect. If 
they would be known by Heaven or earth, as the true 
ministers of God, let them imitate Jesus Christ, preach- 
ing in the synagogues of Galilee, and throughout the 
cantons of Jewry. Let them imitate his great precursor, 
the bold Baptizer at the ford of Jordan and in the wil- 
derness of Bethabara, where he was only known as the 
reprover of sin and the messenger of grace ! Let them" 
imitate his apostles. "With vice and irreligion they 
were never known to compound, even for a moment, but 
established the throne, reared the altar, and founded the 
Church, upon the ruins of Idolatry and the extermination 
of crime ! Look at the prophetic leader of the Israel of 
God under the Old Dispensation. When called to the 
work of the ministry, he plead his frailty in bar to the 
performance of duty. Most eloquently did he tell his God 
that his was a stammering; tono^ue," and that he could 
not, in the language of the Pharaohs, publish the will of 
Heaven to the ''Princes of the land of Ham." But when 
he opened his mouth and essayed the task, God was with 
him ; and that tongue, but late so frail, over-awed Pha- 
raoh, astonished all Egypt, and charmed the listening 
ear of Israel, until they followed its accents by thousands 
into the fastnesses of the wilderness ! Look at Peter 
under the i^Tew Dispensation. Unlike his successors, he 
commenced his ministry with a thunderpeal. It opened 
upon the world like the radiance of the morning. The 
first lightning .that escaped his eye proA^ed mortal, and 
the death of the perfidious Annanias and Sapphira became 
the seal of his apostleship. And, miracles apart, God 



AKD FUNCTIONS. 



67 



has written upon tlie parchment of every minister ''go 
and do likewise/*' God, who sent them, grant they may 
respond in death, ''we have done as thou hast said, and 
yet there is room — enlargement at the foot of the 
mercy seat, and welcome in the heart of God for all the 
world ! 

II. When IN the Pulpit, every minister should attend 
TO A proper discrimination of character, in the appli- 
cation of all those doctrines and duties, which may, 
with him, become the subject of illustration. The 
world of man — the sin-degraded family of Adam — is 
properly divisible, and in fact divided, into two great 
classes, whose distinguishing characteristics are those of 
obedience and rebellion — the children of light and dark- 
ness, of nature and grace, of God and the devil. The 
Bible abounds with appropriate instruction and appeal 
for each — for both. They are distinct in character, dis- 
tinct in condition and distinct in destiny, and the faithful 
and skillful minister of the Word, will, in all his ministra- 
tions, give point and prominence to this distinction, in 
the application of doctrine, discipline, and all the moral 
tactics of the Christian faith. These great moral divi- 
sions of mankind, will be duly dififerenced and properly 
attended to ; and this difference, such discrimination, 
will be found indispensable to ministerial fidelity and 
success. 

If the Pulpit lack discernment or courage, in the proper 
discrimination of character, and the duties and dangers 
resultino- it fails of all its hio-h desims. Its efforts are 
powerless, its objects unknown, and the confusion of 
chaos will hover about it. Owing to this defect, how 
many of the pulpits throughout the Christian world have 
been subjected to a most ruinous abuse and perversion 
of fimction ? How many are sacred only to ignorance 



68 



THE PULPIT ITS IIs^STITUTION 



and impudence, noise and nonsense, beggarly dogma- 
tizing and mental inanity 1 The Pulpit, where Heaven 
and earth should meet to discuss the affairs of human 
salvation, too often becomes a scene of pious mockery 
and religious folly. How often is the angel Religion 
present but to look on, drop a tear and retire, while rea- 
son reddens with shame, and common sense retreats in 
disgust 1 That holy place, where the bread of life should 
be broken and the cup of salvation tendered — where con- 
secrated lips should only know the word of life — becomes 
a theater, alas ! on which to display, not the sanctity of 
a Jewish prophet or the purity of a Christian apostle, 
but something to excite the eager, it may be idiot, gaze of 
an undiscerning crowd, the vendings, perhaps, of secta- 
rian bile, or the still more sickly pulings of some pam- 
pered favorite or starveling sycophant, ranting vulgarian 
or mere anecdote-monger. ''Take heed/' says the 
highest authority to the ministry, " that ye put a diff'er- 
ence between the holy and the unholy, the clean and the 
unclean. 

In Nehemiah's time, the era of the more formal com- 
mencement of preaching, the minister " read the law in 
the hearing of the audience, and gave the sense dis- 
tincly,'' and therein was found written, among other 
things, that the Ammonite and the Moabite — aliens 
from God and virtue — should not come into the conoTe- 
gation of God forever." "Do nothing by partiality." 
"Those that sin rebuke before all." "Comfort my 
people, but show Jerusalem her abominations." "I 
have kept back nothing," says Paul, consulting only the 
interest of those addressed — not their taste — " I have not 
shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God." 
The charge upon which a portion of the Levitical priest- 
hood was repudiated, as irredeemably unworthy the 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



69 



office, was, "theY have put no difference bet^veen the 
holy and the profane, the clean and the unclean but 
herded them too^ether, as interest or inclination suq-- 
gested. And hence their curse and rejection, as traitors 
to God and man. And, that these men hare their suc- 
cessors, deservinof and destined to receive the same 
treatment from Heaven and earth, admits of no dis- 
pute. 

The minister, therefore, vrho does not attend to this 
distinction in the Pulpit, had better leave it for something 
else — any other vocation in preference. He had better 
become a knio^ht of the o-reen bao' or crooked knife — 
had better return to the shop, the plow, or the counting- 
room. It would be better for him to throw the shuttle, 
or hammer the anvil, than to insult the dignity and 
outrage the sanctity of the Pulpit by an unprincipled 
ministry. An unfaithful minister, especially in the 
Pulpit, is the curse and mildew of society ; he does 
Heaven no good, and earth much harm. 

The Pulpit, blent with a thousand memories, and hal- 
lowed by a thousand associations, consecrating the recol- 
lections of the past and the hopes of the future, should 
never be prostituted to unworthy purposes. It should 
always stand the sentinel of truth and virtue, like 
Milton's personification of purity amid the abandoned 
crew of Comus. 

The Pulpit should know, should keep, no terms with 
consequences. Its poverty should constitute no part of 
its humility. Gifted with an undying spark from the 
altar of God, it is rich in the only staple that can pos- 
sibly repay its toils. If it be objected, that the wheat 
and the tares must grow together, it is granted ; but, at 
the same time, they must not be allowed to coalesce 
in the distinctions of the Pulpit. They must be kept 



70 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITl ITON 



separate, although together. The connection is one of 
locality, not of kind. The affinity is one of neighbor- 
hood, not of nature. The classes are as distinct as the 
principles of good and evil. The one class is still tares, 
the other wheat. The one is reserved for the fire, the 
other for the garner. The broad mixture of good and 
bad, of wheat and tares, typing the virtuous and impi- 
ous, will not continue forever. The sickle of final 
retribution, will reap and bundle them in fearful contrast. 
The thunder that now rests as if idle in the hand of 
God, will soon awake from its slumber, and, in fixing 
the distinction, shake terribly, not only earth, but 
Heaven. 

Hence, a system of religious police, or ecclesiastical 
discipline, whether Papal or Protestant, originating at 
E-ome or Oxford, indiscriminately admitting to the sanc- 
tities of the altar and the baptismal font every species 
of moral criminal — -the dissolute, the drunken, the pro- 
fane, and the abandoned, unreclaimed and unreformed — 
and thus awarding the thrones of Heaven to a generation 
of vipers — is not only unworthy the confidence of Chris- 
tendom, and a proper text for infidel derision, but a 
shameless prostitution of things sacred, sufficient to 
provoke an outburst of scorn, bitter and burning, from 
all the damned ! Every minister, therefore, should be a 
prophet of plagues and curses, as well as a messenger 
of peace. He is obliged, even by kindness as well as 
duty, to point to the dart of vengeance trembling in the 
air ! 

And, at the same time that he would challenge the 
claims and plead the cause of truth and duty, with the 
fire of Milton, the rapture of a prophet, he should lash 
vice in all its possible forms with the indignation of 
Juvenal—the rebuke of unyielding virtue. He should 



AXD FUNCTIONS. 



71 



teacli all, that moral qualities on earth can alone pre- 
pare them for the nature and character of their future 
abodes of residence, whether in Heaven on high or 
hell beneath. He should teach all, ivith unwearied 
urgency of appeal, that life is an orbit through which 
mortality can pass but once ; that it is but an hour-glass, 
and that every sand ought to be a pious deed or virtuous 
thought. And, if this be not so, so far at least as 
principle is involved, death and hell, it is to be feared, 
will be the heritage of the delinquent. 

This is, indeed, a terrible thought, and we would not 
indulge in haste or rashness of denunciation. But we 
know of no species of infidelity equal, in point of reck- 
lessness and aggravation, to derelict motive and want of 
integrity in the Pulpit, where confidence is so naturally 
conciliated, and credulity so readily leads the multitude 
astray. Where, as in the Pulpit, can a man, with such 
ensnaring success, lie like truth, and yet most truly lie ? 
If a minister, thus delinquent, be a man of surface and 
sound only, he may be little more than a mere fungus 
in the fellowship of the altar where he serves. If he 
be gifted with the advantages of mind and information, 
however, and yet unfaithful to his trust, he becomes 
an infectious leprosy in the moral scene around him, 
ulcerino' the whole social mass. 

o 

Integrity, therefore, should always distinguish the 
Pulpit. Truth should be pervadingly its property, and 
every stroke upon its dial plate should be true to the 
occasion and the hour. We would have ministers ac- 
complished, but honest. We would not have a minister 
a Goth in feeling, or a Yandal in manner. We would 
have him polished, but a shaft still, and an effective one 
too, in the quiver of his God. We would not have him 
polished and furbished, and furbished and polished, until 



72 THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 

he becomes a mere extract, and the attenuity of the 
instrument destroys its efficiency altogether 1 Though 
an able and master- workman, he should be direct, 
honest, and pointed, in all his ministrations. Nerve 
and energy, a vigorous manhood of intellect and vir- 
tue, will likewise be found always necessary. How 
often does it happen, that when an earthquake of appeal 
and remonstrance is necessary to rouse an audience, we 
have nothing but moral prosing, labored essays, or 
captious disputation — as sheerly uninfluential, on the 
thousands addressed, as the burden of a moonbeam 
playing upon a surface of ice. 

It follows, therefore, that every minister should prop- 
erly discriminate character, and apply truth ; and that 
this should be done with point and epigram. He should 
give to each his portion of meat, what he needs and 
what he deserves, in due season ; recollecting, with the 
emphasis of deep and living concern, that Heaven or 
hell must be the destiny of all who hear him. And, 
hence, those ministers, v,^ho lay the principal stress in 
their character and profession upon a few imposing 
ceremonies, perhaps a single dogma or deified ordi- 
nance — upon the driveling senility of factitious pomp, 
upon the technicalities of a creed, the cant of a party, 
the mania of some supernumerary duty or virtue of 
recent origin, or the affectation of peculiar sanctity 
hung out for notice and admiration upon a singular and 
marked exterior — may do very well indeed as tools and 
minions, of functionary value, to recruit the ranks of a 
party, but are utterly unfit for Christian ministers. 

To displace the death of Christ, and the repentance, 
faith, and holiness of the Bible, by a substitution, in 
their stead, of means and appliances merely extrinsic 
and modal at best, and which have no necessary con- 



AND FUxNXTIONS 73 

nection with tlie moral nature of man, and never can 
have until Omnipotence sliall subvert and reconstruct 
the laws and elements both of matter and mind — the 
tendency of such a course, on the part of the Pulpit, 
seems to be one of the principal causes of its want of 
vitality and success. Let such ministers, then, take the 
Xew Testament for their model, and mold their char- 
acter and ministrations accordingly, or leave the Pulpit 
in the hands of abler and better, because true and faith- 
ful, men. How many, uncalled, thrust themselves into 
ihis holy office ! How many are thrust in, by the over- 
weaninof kindness of io;norant misoaiided friends ! How 
many are mustered into the ranks from party, sectarian, 
and interested motives ! How many volunteer their 
services without counting the cost, and check on Heaven 
and earth for compensation and good fortune, when 
Heaven, at least, is not their debtor, and is obliged to 
dishonor their drafts in mercy to those they would other- 
wise impose upon and lead astray. 

HI. We notice the mode or method of discrimina- 
tion TO BE attended TO BY THE FAITHFUL MINISTER. And 

here we are compelled to present the offense of the 
Cross, in more than one distasteful lessson, to the ear of 
guilt and crime. Heaven has furnished the scale of 
judgment, and he that runs may read. 

The Pulpit must not shrink from its duty. The im- 
aginary God of modern conventional refinement, with 
the usual conformities of taste and fashion, are not 
to be consulted at all. The people, all people, men 
everywhere, and of whatever rank or condition, must 
know their sins, their danger, and the deep damnation 
of their doom, unless they reform. '^By their fruits ye 
shall know them.'' Out of the abundance of the 

heart the mouth speaketh.'' *'He that doeth not right- 
4 



74 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



eousness is not of God, neither liim tliat loveth not liis 
brother/' Pure and undented rehgion before God and 
the Father, is this, to visit the widow and fatherless in 
their affliction, and keep himself unspotted from the 
world/' Personal purity and social benevolence con- 
stitute piety in the Eye that discerns folly in angels 
and imfurity in the Heavens. ''He that committeth 
sin is of the devil." ''His servants ye are, to whom 
you yi< Id yourselves servants to obey." "My sheep 
hear my voice, and they follow me." "Hereby know 
we th^t we love God, because we keep his command- 
ments. ' "If ye love me ye will keep my words." 
Thus the grounds of difference and the law of distinc-- 
tion, are given in the Bible. These grounds of differ- 
ence, and this law of distinction, must be placed and 
applied by the minister, not only abstractly, in general 
objective form, but, when he has the necessary knowl- 
edge of those addressed, by observation or otherwise, 
it should be so done as to let it be known and felt, that 
every species of vice is to meet the reprehension of the 
Pulpit, whether the guilty be present or absent. The 
artful trimmer or pulpit loafer, the polite lounger or 
drawing-room evangelist, who, on all occasions, is woo- 
ing and courting the breeze of popular favor, ought to 
be hissed from the Pulpit in disdain ! 

Let the minister, therefore, attend to character — the 
ordinary elements of which, are conversation, social 
intercourse, and private conduct. These are usually 
distinctive of the man. The topics which become text- 
ual and habitual with him, the company he seeks as 
kindred and congenial, the sources of enjoyment sought 
in private — by these outgoings of the inner man, men 
generally report what they really are. Every passion, 
movement and muscle, betrays the heart and speaks the 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



76 



truth, and tliese tests seldom conduct to an erroneous 
conclusion. 

Select the tongue as a solitary test. It is but one 
among a thousand ; but, connecting itself with each ot 
the more pervasive elements of character, to which we 
have asked attention, it will serve to type our meaning 
with regard to the rest. So true an index is it, it would 
appear to be, as Seneca says, a parcel of the mind — 
the rio'ht hand of the soul." It is the oTeat ordinary 
instrument of communication between mind and mind, 
man and man. And yet how versatile and various in 
all that belono's to it ! In love or hatred, o^ood will or 
revenge, the performance of good or the perpetration of 
evil, it is equally at the service of every one. In one 
aspect it is an instrument of control — a ''bridle," says 
St. James, to guide and check, a ''helm" to direct and 
control. In another, he pronounces it more unmanage- 
able than "beasts," more intractable than "serpents," 
more indocile than "fishes ;" while in a third he tells 
us, it is the common fire-brand of this world's conten- 
tions, lighted up at the flames of "hell !" 

By these, and other kindred and dissimilar tests, men 
may be known, and should be addressed accordingly. 
Men of every character, and vice of every description, 
should be exposed, and especially those of the more 
abandoned kind. To all, Bible in hand and eternity in 
view, the minister should cry aloud and spare not. By 
"line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and 
there a little," he should clearly enforce the lesson upon 
all, that character is destiny, and that boundless good or 
evil, is the alternative to which it points. And in making 
this discrimination, and maintaining the great distinction 
upon which we have been insisting, jtidgment shotild be- 
gin at the house of God — should commence at the altar— 



76 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



and tlience diver o;e throuo-li all tlie distributions of 

o o 

society. The arraignment should reach the Churcli 
and the world, and they should stand up alike for judg- 
ment. 

Impiety and worthlcssncss^ under cover of religious pre- 
tension ; the hypocrite, with his studied circumspection 
and macadamized gravity, his hollow groans and treache- 
rous smiles ; the Christian churl, whose God is his inter- 
est, living for himself and to himself; the lukewarm 
Laodicean hanger-on upon the skirts of the Church, whose 
conscience is dead, and his feelings inured in the sleep 
of a death-like inactivity; the bigot, who hunts his fellow- 
being with the bitterness and ferocity of a fiend, and 
when his heartless unkindness has murdered him, would 
further assure himself he is right, by scenting the fancied 
smoke of his victim's torment ascending up forever and 
ever ; the prejudiced and self-secure, in our churches, with 
Avhom improvemxent has no future tense, who, girt round 
with the weird sanctity of error, a bandaged and fetter- 
ed herd, swear by their chains that they are free, and 
by their follies that they are perfect ; the teacher and 
propagandist of gross religious error, although the 
wreathed viper may be found coiled about the heart and 
conscience of thousands ; the slanderer ,^\iQ glories in intel- 
lectual massacre and the murder of character — who lives 
only upon the offal of the reputation he has ruined — whose 
touch is contamination, and his contact death — who, 
wherever he exists, is a curse and a nuisance, his influence 
pestiferous as the grave and loathsome as the breath of 
hell; the scoffer, claiming the rights and wrapped in the 
robes of the scorner; the Infidel, with his boasted privi- 
lege of living without God and free from the restraints 
of virtue, like a solitary cloud self-balanced in a uni- 
verse of gloom ; the worshiper of Bacchus, the practical 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



77 



drunkard, Tvho has exchanged the glory of man, and 
bartered the hopes of heaven, for the rights and func- 
tions of a beast ; the licentious and dchavxhed^ who resem- 
ble the reptile, in that they doom to neglect the flowers 
they fail to destroy, and leave behind them defilement 
and loathing wherever they are found ; the gambler. who> 
rather than not gratify his passion for play, would stake 
the thrones of eternity upon the cast of a die — who, 
unmoved by the tears and entreaties of her that bore 
him, the wife of his bosom, and the children of his own 
bowels, continues to indulge his hated passion, until the 
infatuated reprobate would table his game upon the tomb 
of his father, or shuffle for infamy upon the threshold of 
hell ; the frolic sons and giddy daughters of dissipation, 
amid scenes and saturnalia, which can only be thought 
of as the appliances of vice and passion, and as pander- 
ing to their aims ; the thoughtless and uorldly-rrdnded 
vullion, with this world for their God and treasure ; and, 
finally, the unbelieving and ahoviinable, of every class and 
name ! — these are all before, and in the eye of, the Pul- 
pit, and to attend to them is one of its plainest duties. 
And, ordinary means failing to reclaim them, the more 
fearful denunciations of God's violated law should be ap- 
pealed to, and the appalling apparition of the eternal 
future made to stalk before them, like an avenging 
specter ! 

Such an exhibition of truth and plain dealing, will re- 
quire boldness of character and independence of action 
in the Pulpit ; and this is what we want. Rejecting alike 
the schools and the tactics of Loyola and of Chesterfield— 
the Jesuitical arts of the one and the senseless duphcity 
of the other, together with the pestilent appliances of 
the mere demagague of the altar — the minister should 
always consider himself a pupil only in the school of 



78 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



Christ. How many Christianized heathen have we among 
us ? How many Paganized Christians ? How many 
unchristian religionists ? Plato or the Stagyrite — some 
blinded dupe to bewildering metaphysics or systematic 
theology, or it may be dogmatizing propagator of novel 
discoveries, revealing a short way to truth and a broad 
one to Heaven — becomes dictator in the Church of 
God ; and the uncompromising Moloch of party opin- 
ion, takes the place and wields the authority of the 
Bible. 

How many in Christian lands, if instructed to do so by 
a human teacher or human creed, would turn Crusader 
abroad to pull down and destroy, or Anchorite at home 
to curse and revile. And this too, ostensibly, to purge 
the conscience from dead works, and deliver themselves 
from the snare of the devil ! In all this, the real bul- 
lion can only be separated from the alloy by the fire of 
the assayer's crucible, which we are recommending. 
Well, but vice and error are so complicate, so multiform 
and undetailed, says the wily temporizer, the Pulpit poli- 
tician. Never mind, if the hydra have seven heads, the 
monster must be beheaded seven times — and this will re- 
quire not only that the minister have courage, but that 
he go at it early and continue late. Honest severity in 
the Pulpit, is like the lightning of Heaven — it makes holy 
what it scathes. It resembles the thunderbolt passing 
through tainted exhalations but to purify them. As the 
ever-varying bursts and touches and throes of nature 
are parts of her regularity, and essential to her ordained 
results, so stern collectedness, vigor and daring, are the 
elements of Pulpit worth and vital means of its success, 
not less than its generous compassion, lofty trust, and 
gushing tenderness — which should know no pause, nor 
ebb, nor bound. And if this be not so upon a large por- 



AND FUKCTION'S. 



79 



tian of the Cliiircli frequenting thousands, who hear us 
preach the pleadings of piety and the voice of God, will 
fall unheeded as the sound of household words. 

lY. The high standard of Christian morals must 

NOT BE LOWERED TO ACCOMODATE THE DELINQUENT. The 

majesty of the Pulpit, and the sacred simplicity of the 
Christian Altar, should be maintained at the risk of life, 
and in prospect of the r^ick and the wheel. Thou shalt 
not return to them. " Let the minister sustain the dig- 
nity of his high vocation, with unbending firmness, if it 
cost him the death of Jeremiah, who was murdered in 
Egypt, or the martyrdom of Paul, in the capital of 
heathen Rome. 

In the same proportion that a minister lowers the stand- 
ard of Christian morals, he must, commensurate with 
whatever influence he may have, widen the empire, and 
prolong the reign, of sin. Principle should be his breast- 
plate, and fidelity the girdle of his loins. He should be 
faithful to his trust, taking the poor of the earth for his 
clients, and Heaven his reversionary fee. He should 
maintain the ark of God and the weal of his Church, in 
all their fluctuating fortunes, while there is a drop of 
blood propelled from the heart, or a single breath from 
God to animate his toil and sustain him in the conflict. 
Assured of a well-weighed course of action, it only re- 
mains for him to pursue it with death-daring firmness — 
the sternness of inexorable resolve. Even the most faith- 
ful ministers, those of rarest worth, may fall in the con- 
flict ; but, it will be from the walls of Sion or upon the 
hill of God, and they shall sink in death, with the world 
for their shrine and mankind their mourners ! 

And will ministers hesitate to do this, fearing they will 
only be distinguished by the indifference and dislike of 
their kind ? Will they dread the threats of the mighty — 



80 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



the curses of tlie malevolent — the hisses of the fool ? 
Surely not. For, after all, what glory is comparable to 
that of the Pulpit ! Is it found in the torch of classic 
illumination, or the bannered arch of chivalry ? Is it to 
be seen in power, extending its iron scepter to every thing 
beneath the circuit of the sun ? Can it be seen in the 
spectacle of crouching millions, bowing to kiss the im- 
perial hand of a regal Despot ? Is it to be met with in 
the history of the world's Caesars — its Alexanders — its 
Marlboroughs, and its Tamerlanes — who roll their char- 
iots to glory over the dying and the dead ; who light the 
fires of conflagration, and sweep creation desolate, from 
the cottaofe to the throne ! Oh no ! It is the immacu- 
late simplicity of the Christian Altar that charms ! It is 
this, that has made kings forego their crowns — the war- 
rior his sword — the philosopher his lamp, and last, though 
not least, the miser his golden gains ! 

Such is the glory of the Pulpit. And long has it spoken 
more than the thoughts of man in the ears of every people. 
Contemporary and successive nations estranged from God, 
have beheld its rising power and exclusive bearing with 
virtuous dismay. It has humbled the power and pre- 
tensions of every other worship to the dust — even the 
most lofty and imposing, sustained by the lore of Greece 
and the empire of Rome. The groves of Delphi were 
deserted and her oracles confounded. The Minerva of 
the Acropolis became an ivied desolation. The fane and 
the altar of Ephesian Diana, boasting the richest mag- 
nificence of Ionian splendor, faded from the vision of 
the world ; while the proud temple even of the Capito- 
line Jove, in all its bewildering grandeur, bowed low in 
a contest with the unlettered fishermen of Galilee ! 

Pulpit fidelity belongs to every situation — all condi- 
tions. Whether in the palaces of the ^reat or hovels of 



AKD FUNCTIONS. 



81 



the poor, amid the Fayonian breezes of summer or the 
tempests of winter, ministers must maintain their stand. 
That minister, who does not fear the world, will make the 
world fear him. Let the faithful minister say to Adam 
in his transgression, ''Where art thou ? " To Cain, the 
fratracide, ''Where is thy brother Abel ? " To David, 
the royal voluptuary, " Thou art the man ! " To Jonah, 
the fretful prophet, " Doest thou well to be angry ? To 
Peter, the temporizer, " Get behind me, Satan." To the 
Devil, the common enemy of our kind, " The Lord re- 
buke thee.'' And, to the God-rejecting thousands that 
attend his ministry, " Ye serpents, ye generation of vi- 
pers, how can you escape the damnation of hell V To 
the infidel Sadducee, he should preach the immortality 
of the soul and resurrection of the dead. Before a Pa- 
gan tribunal, he should reason of righteousness, temper- 
ance, and a judgment to come ; and in the imperial court 
of the Areopagus, drag Jupiter from his throne, and thun- 
der against Idolatry, like a messenger from Heaven ! 
He should break in upon their lethargy in the accents of 
the tempest. His warning voice should pierce their ears 
like the birth of the mountain wind — the near echo of an 
earthquake ! He should come down upon them, with the 
palsying sweep of impending terror and gathering wrath ; 
while to the penitent, the weary, and the heavy-laden, 
the minister of God should be like the bow of tenderness, 
shedding its radiance amid the tears of the storm ! Thus, 
in the character of a minister, devotion, fearlessness 
and feeling, should be made to blend, as nature has 
blended the breath, the brow and the vermilion of 
Heaven ! 

Such are the legitimate objects of pulpit- labor. The 
Pulpit is alike intended for the regeneration of the altar 
and the empire, giving character to the religious instrue- 



82 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



tion and civic policy of all Christian countries. Still, 
Christianity is, by its very nature, excluded, so as to ex- 
ist properly apart from every system of local legislation 
or conventional polity, and should be contended for in 
its purity, by its ministers, without any unnatural alli- 
ance with other systems, although the world * beside 
should abjure it. In doing this, ministers should be 
consistent in purpose and direct in action. They are not 
to study show, but effect ; not to aim at a display of fire- 
works, but a discharge of artillery. The glory of a min- 
ister does not consist in being stuck over with titles 
or hung round with strings." Outward show and pro- 
fessional bearing are of but little moment. We want the 
blow as well as the blunderbuss. We want not bloodless 
tactics, but the field of death, with the wounded and the 
slain. Not only the thunder and the tempest, but the 
lightning and the bolt ! And this effectiveness will 
throw around the minister an infinitely prouder distinc- 
tion than all the gilded fancies and honeyed sorceries 
that ever lurked beneath the laurels of Delos and 
Daphna, or floated amid the clouds and the rainbows of 
Olympus ! 

Such ability and fidelity, however, will often fail to be 
appreciated. How often is the man, who, with humble 
awe and God-like toil, has devoted years of unremitting 
application to the study of the Gospel and its effective 
ministration, outlawed from the pale of pulpit worth, by 
those who never read and never think, and with whom 
posing superstition or canting insolence, arterial action 
or a muscular twitch, constitute both faith and hope, and, 
indeed, charity too ! In this way, many an able minis- 
ter has found himself tried, condemned and gravely laid 
aside, to the full extent of their number and influence, 
by the upstart, the dotard and the gossip, and other 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



83 



equally interesting specimens of impertinent pretension 
or personified stupidity ! 

Faithful ministers will be opposed, but the opposition 
will be powerless. It is now as heretofore. The moles 
and bats " — all know their reach of vision — ''in full as- 
sembly find, on special search, the keen-eyed eagle blind." 
These moles and bats abound in all our churches. Many 
will demand that the minister '' build with untempered 
mortar" — that he "heal the hurt of the dauo^hter of 
God's people slightly." They will call for a flesh-pleas- 
ing, sin-soothing strain in the pulpit ; a Gospel diluted 
and dulcified, like the meretricious themes and persiflage 
of mere song or sentimentalism. And, in too many in- 
stances it is to be feared, the claim will be yielded by 
ministers, through fear of losing caste and influence — of 
offending, forsooth, some of the tithe-paying bigots or 
loose-living patrons of their charge. But not so the 
faithful minister. He will do his duty, and say to all 
such, your money and your influence perish with you : 
our negotiations relate to your immortality, not your 
purses or your patronage. If we share your coff'ers and 
countenance to a reasonable extent — the extent of com- 
petence and comfort commensurate with our rights and 
services — well : if not, our trust is elsewhere. While 
lilies bloom and ravens are fed, we have a lesson against 
despondency. God, who eyes the sparrow's fall, and by 
whom even the hairs of the head are numbered," will 
heed the wants of his faithful ministers, and supply them 
too : and not only supply their wants, but lead them on, 
an embattled phalanx, against the forms of vice and the 
foes of virtue, wherever found and however confederated. 
Their cause is one of transcendent interest. They are 
animated by lofty remembrances — a high and disturbing 
stimulation. God is with them. They have to do with 



84 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



the hopes of one world and the fears of another ; and 
the spirit-stirring effect of their efforts and labors cannot 
be resisted. It will be like the unfurling of the mighty 
wing of cherubim over an inquiring world ! 

Finally : The protection, success and triumph, se- 
cured TO THE Ministry in the faithful performance of 
DUTY. They shall be protected. I will be with thee to 
save and to deliver." It is God's pleasure, and interest 
too, to protect them. Ten thousand evils shall impend, 
in as many threatening forms, but Almighty Goodness is 
their shield. Eternal self-sufficiency is pledged and 
sworn to sustain them in the breach of every hazard. 
Many will be the misfortunes of virtue, but strong is the 
Lord God who is set for their defense, and infinite are 
the resources embarked in their favor and cause. Let 
them but be as God's mouth," and the only practical 
effect of all their trials will be to gem and star their 
crowns in Heaven. Heaven will protect them until they 
have fulfilled their mission, and then they shall cease at 
once to work and live. 

In this great struggle, their collective might will be 
required. Let them not • blench from their purpose or 
their work. Let them be seen removing stain after stain 
from the injured escutcheon of our common nature. Let 
them strike off some one, at least, of the thousand forms 
of misery from the almost endless catalogue of human 
woe. Surveying the world as would an angel of God, 
let them heed and help as they can, the want and an- 
guish of its suffering millions. Let the baptism of the 
world's tears prelude, in the hopes of the Pulpit, its 
coming purity. The subject and the occasion impel us 
to say to every one of them, go on : God will protect and 
succeed you, and soon the ridicule of Infidelity, despite 
its keen and classic point, will wonder at the impotence 



AND FUNCTIONS. 



85 



of tlie sliaft it leveled, and its malice weep fruitlessly, 
as do the damned, over the inefficacy of the hate it aim- 
ed at the Pulpit. Yain indeed will be found to be all its 
efforts and all its hopes. They only remind us of the 
gleams of putrescence which, unable to eifulge, are fated 
to expire in the rottenness producing them. 

They shall succeed. Heaven will crown their efforts 
with success. A measure of success will always attend 
ministerial fidelity. They will even imperceptibly mend 
the morals of their charge and the world. They may 
Qot see it, but the seed is sown, the ''bread is cast upon 
the waters," and the net effect will follow. At the ap- 
pointed time they shall return with their sheaves, amid 
the shoutings of harvest. If each shall have improved 
but a single soul, they have not lived in vain. It can 
only, however, be known in Heaven, to how many pious 
purposes they have given birth — how many tears they 
have dried — how many sighs they have checked — how 
many broken hearts they have bound up — into how many 
wounded spirits they have poured the balsam of hope 
and the balm of life. But, if no fruit of this kind, they 
have performed their duty, honored God, and acquitted 
themselves as ministers of his Word and stewards of his 
mysteries. This itself is success, and their reward is 
in Heaven. They have at least made themselves better, 
and left their example ; and the achievement is more 
than the conquest of kingdoms. 

But this is not all. Let the past explain the future. 
At the death of Christ his fold numbered less than a 
score. ISTow the hosts of his elect count ten times as 
many millions, beside the numbers without number who 
have died in his cause and heired the promised thrones 
of his kingdom. The tide has set in, in favor of their 
cause. The decisive battle has been fought, and nothing 



86 



THE PULPIT ITS INSTITUTION 



worth retaining has been lost. The mighty impulse has 
been given, and every time the pendulum of unfolding 
destiny vibrates, it takes the diameter of a larger arch — 
and shall, until glory end the world's eventful drams., 
and the shout of its regeneration shall everywhere rise, 
like the echo of heavenly harpings amid the bowers of 
the celestial paradise. 

They shall triumph- — individually, collectively, ultii 
mately. Whether poor or rich, distinguished or obscure, 
learned or unlearned — whether in the city full, or spread- 
ing waste — -whether burnt by tropical suns, buried amid 
the snow-drifts of the North, or fanned by the breezes of 
California — whether they reel on the mountain or roll iii 
the trough of ocean — an immortality of joy begins at the 
tomb ! Shades of Frederic and ^NTapoleon, Byron and 
La Place, would not this have been glory ! He who 
hangs the universe on his arm, and feeds its vast family 
at his table, can, and will, protect and supply them. 

He who opposes them, is like the silly Thracian shock- 
ing his harmless arrow at a thunderbolt ; for they a:^e 
the heralds of a holier, a sublimer message, than evv3r 
charmed the ear of earth before ; and the idols and cer- 
emonies of every other creed or worship shall be con- 
signed to the custody of neglect, oblivion and scorn — the 
moles of their desolate grottoes — the bats of their de- 
serted temples ! And when Infidelity lies buried in the 
grave of years, epitaphed in characters of execration by 
the millions disabused of its sorceries, the Ministry shall 
receive the homage of ages, and share the admiration of 
a virtuous universe ! 

Ministers of every creed and name — of every color and 
clime — are imperceptibly wearing, falling and dropping, 
into the ranks and lines of Christian enterprise and evan- 
gelical reform ; and soon will they present an extended 



AXD FUNCTIONS, 



87 



front of bristling bayonets tbe gates of hell cannot resist ! 
The Pulpit has suryived the tempest which has covered 
the ocean of time with shipwreck. It has stood like a 
column erect among ruins — an edifice unshaken and un- 
defaced amid the surrounding overthrow of palaces and 
temples — peering, like the magnetic rod around which the 
lightnings of Heaven play but cannot harm — and the 
lamp of its glory, as the pharos of the world, shall live 
and burn immortal and u.ndimmed ! 

It is thus the ministry under God shall spoil princi- 
palities and powers, making a show of them openly, as 
the spoils of battle and the trophies of conquest. Thrones 
shall crumble and dynasties fall, and altars and temples 
rise to repair the desolation and perpetuate the change ! 
Headed by the great Captain of their salvation, they 
shall victoriously push the conquests of the Cross from 
Zembla to Cape Horn, and from the equator to either 
pole, until the religion of the Bible — the only glory of 
the Pulpit — orbed in the rainbow of her own grandeur, 
and throned in celestial light, shall hold her high cul- 
minating point in the heavens, and everywhere shed her 
redeeming radiance on the evening of the world ! 



88 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



SERMON in. 

THE DEATH OF CHRIST A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 

''Jesus knowing that all tilings were now accomplished — said, it 
is finished." — John xix, 28, 30. 

The utterance of these words, terminated the deep 
and desolate humiliation of the Son of God. The strug- 
gles of his eventful mission and his companionship with 
earth, are now at an end. And to this event, the death 
of Christ as a sacrifice for sin, it is our v/ish and pur- 
pose to claim your attention at our present interview. 

The supernatural, connected with facts and principles, 
as found in the history of man's redemption, does not 
reach him now, as originally, by supernatural means 
and methods — but comes to him like every thing else 
depending upon documentary historical proof; and, in- 
vokino' Divine direction and aid, the ordinary laws of 
truth and nature should govern us in the examination 
and reception of it. And, accordingly, it becomes our 
business, not to account for the rare and the marvelous, 
the strange and the mysterious, but simply to inquire 
whether the record be true, and to what extent we are 
interested in it. 

The history of Jesus Christ, during the period of his 
advent upon earth, constitutes the great foundation of 
the Christian Religion, both in plan and issue — in prin- 
ciple and product — and he who is unacquainted v»^ith the 
one, or doubtful of its truth, cannot reasonably be pre- 
sumed to understand or share the other. All the mate- 
rial substantive parts, therefore, of our Lord's history, 
must of necessity be matter of immediate concern, not 
less than immortal interest, with every human being. 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



89 



The most interesting, eventful and impressive part of the 
history of our Lord, will claim your attention and chal- 
lenge your devotion on the present occasion. We mean 
of course his death — an event, which, from the nature and 
extent of its mysterious connection with all others, has 
colored the fortunes and told upon the destinies of the 
world for a thousand generations, and will continue to 
do so, until, amid the fires of judgment and the light of 
the last conflagration, the awards of eternity shall decide 
forever the character of its inhabitants. 

In relation to the death of Christ, we shall, First, 
NOTICE the Divine purpose in connection with it, as 
revealed in the Scriptures, and that state of things 
ON the part of man, which they assume and disclose, 

AS HAVING RENDERED IT NECESSARY. The death of Chrlst, 

viewed as an atonement for the sins of men, is an event 
involving the most stupendous interests and displaying 
the utmost moral grandeur, as it regards both Heaven 
and earth ; and should, therefore, be well understood and 
justly appreciated. Unless we can regard the death of 
Christ as an atonement proper, a grand compensative 
arrangement securing to the government of God vindica- 
tion and safety in the salvation of offending millions, 
Christianity, to our conception, is a fable, and its hopes a 
cheat. 

It is an assumption of Revelation confirmed by all 
analogous disclosures, that the evil of sin can only be 
shown by its punishment — the exhibition of attendant 
misery or suffering, as the unavoidable restilt of its 
commission. Accordingly, the Scriptures represent, that 
when man — from the freedom and direction of his own 
choice, without any internal impulsion or external ne- 
cessity, without coersion of any kind from the appoint- 
ments of t]:e Creator — had sinned and bid from him the 
4* 



90 THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 

protection and favor of Heaven, it did not become the 
Divine government, nor was it consistent with the asser- 
tion of its rights and claims, to receive him again into 
favor without some adequate, some public, impressive 
display of the evil of sin, and its utter and eternal re- 
pugnance to the nature and perfections of Deity, such as 
punitive visitation would be likely to effect. 

Our Lord laid down his life for us, as daysman " or 
umpire, as ''mediator" and '' surety, charged with 
the arbitrament of the great controversy existing be- 
tween God and man. And his death proceeded upon 
the principle, not of literal commercial justice or ex- 
change, but that of legal forensic substitution and satis- 
faction — a public legislative expedient ; and the transfer- 
ence of the punishment incurred by us to him, upon his 
voluntary assumption of it, displayed the evil of sin, 
and God's abhorrence of it, as fully and fearfully as 
though the curse incurred had been divided and ex- 
hausted among the millions of our fallen family. The 
law did not require that sin should be finally irremissi- 
ble, and the sinner subjected, without remedy, to the 
imprisonment of the damned. Its great substantive 
requirement was, that adequate and exemplary punish- 
ment, or suffering, should proclaim the evil sin. The 
character of God, and the principles of his government, 
required, with unbending firmness, that his eternal hatred 
of sin should be shown in some way that would say most 
impressively to the fallen, as well as other districts of 
his creation, that sin should not go unpunished in the 
kingdom and government of Jehovah. 

The divine object in the punishment of sin, was not the 
individual injury of the sinner, but the good of all 
destined to be affected by the result. And, as the evil 
of sin could only be shown by its punishment in some 



A propitiation: for sin. 



91 



form, when Jesus Christ offered to bear the burden of 
that punishment in a way, and to an extent, that would 
justify Heaven and indemnify the interests of the uni- 
verse in the pardon of the sinner, we see no reason why 
such a mediation should not be accepted, inasmuch as it 
answered and secured all the direct and ulterior ends 
both of law and government. And in this way Divine 
justice was maintained and asserted in all its range and 
severity — co-equal and co-regent with the Divine mercy, 
in the world's redemption. Upon any supposition assum- 
ing the salvation of man as a sinner, atonement be- 
comes indispensable to the full extent the original law 
of punishment was necessary. If God could forgive sin 
without requiring its punishment, or some adequate 
substitutionary arrangement in a government of mo- 
tives, answering the same purposes, of which, however, 
we cannot conceive, why not originally govern the world, 
and dispose of its destinies, without appending to its 
commission the sanction of retributive suffering at all ? 
If the one was necessary, the other was eqtially so. If 
the law of punishment was originally necessary, it must 
be carried into effect, in some way equivalent to the 
purposes which gave it birth. The final cause or reason 
of the original law of punishment, must be fully met 
and satisfied, or man, as a sinner, cannot be saved with- 
otit an imputation of the character of God. 

That the law of punishment is a necessary element of 
xhf^ Divine o-overnment, with reo-ard to man, is shown 
most incontestibly by the fact, that, notwithstanding the 
death of Christ and all its stupendous issues, sin is, and 
always has been, largely and fearfully punished in the 
mortalitv, suffering, want, anguish, and dissolution of 
our com^mon nature. It is, moreover, true that the 
original curse, in its subjective relation to each indi- 



4 



92 THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 

vidual offender, is merely suspended, not finally re- 
moved. Tlie atonement is but a provisional expedient, 
operating a suspension of the original penalty, and not 
a final cancelment of guilt. And unless the prescribed 
conditionary terms of the covenant of redemption are 
conformed to, the primary law of punishment will still 
have its course, and give the offender to the perdition of 
a destiny he refused to reverse by accepting the Gospel 
of the grace of God. 

In sum : sin infinitely hateful to God, and equally de- 
basin and ruinous to man, whether considered in its 
nature or effects, so directly challenged Almighty ab- 
horence, that, without an expression of this abhorence 
eminently extraordinary, it w^ould have been madness in 
Heaven or earth to expect its forgiveness. We receive 
it, therefore, as an original indestructible element of 
the empire of God over the universe of mind, that the evil 
of sin can only be shown by its punishment ; and with 
equal strength of conviction, we assume, that the death 
of Christ, as a propitiation for the sins of the worlds 
accomplished this much more effectually than it could 
have been done by the perdition of all the unnumbered 
millions for whom Christ died ! 

II. The subject, however, has other aspects in 

W^HICH IT should BE CONSIDERED ; AND, RETURNING TO 
EARTH AND MAN, LET US NOTICE, IN THE NEXT PLACE, IN 
WHAT WAY, AND TO WHAT EXTENT, HUMAN AGENCY WAS 
CONCERNED, IN BRINGING ABOUT THIS EVENT. AluJ ^ fi^'^^: 

let US glance at ike chargfs of guilt and alleged criminal 
misconduct upon which the Jeivs ostensibly condemned and 
crucified the son of God, These charges were three in 
number, with numerous confirmatory items and specifi- 
cations. The first w^as hostility to the Jewish common- 
wealth, still existing and recognized as such, although, 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIX. 



93 



in fact, Judea was, at the time, a Roman province. The 
second charge was sedition against the Eoman Empire, 
or an invasion of the imperial rights of the reigning 
Ceesar. The third charge was blasphemy^ — in that he 
claimed equality with God, by declaring himself to be his 
son, thereby in effect, as the Jews understood him, and 
not improperly, declaring that he was God. On these 
chai'D'es, the last of which onlv was true, true as to the 
fact alleo^ed, but not the construction makino- it bias- 
phemy, the Jews proceeded to secure his sentence by 
Eoman authority, and put him to death. 

Such are the facts charged ; and, to understand them 
properly, with the relations and inferences involved, it is 
necessary to add, that had all these charges been true in 
their abstract general import, our Lord had furnished 
the Jews with full and overwhelming proof — proofs more 
irresistible than all the prodigies of their history — that 
he had a Divine and undoubted right to assume even 
more than this, not oiUy in relation to the affairs of this 
world, but also of that which is to come. The Jews, 
therefore, by the laAv of their own creed and faith, were 
utterly and shamelessly inexcusable in putting him to 
death. 

But, again, had not the Divine pretensions of our 
Lord been well and demonstrably founded in truth, the 
inference is irresistible, that he would have been guilty 
of blasphemy, in view of the third charge, according to 
Jewish law, and his death required by express statute — 
the statute of stoning. When, therefore, the Scriptures 
accuse the Jews of guilt and high moral blame, in put- 
ting our Lord to death, they unequivocally assume his 
Divinity, and announce his heavenly origin, as declared 
by himself, and upon which declaration he is arraigned 
by the Jews ; for unless this be so, the Jews, in putting 



94 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



him to death, only did as God had commanded them, 
and deserved commendation rather than blame. 

To assume the titles and claim the rights of Deity, is 
certainly the highest blasphemy of which any creature 
is capable. Had our Lord, therefore, done this, being a 
mere man, or even angel in human form, the deed, as a 
treasonous invasion of the rights of Godhead, would 
have challenged the vengeance of the law and invited 
its execution. Inasmuch as the claims of our Lord 
were only obtruded upon the notice of the Jews, by 
deeds and manifestations which their own Scriptures 
every where pronounced unerringly distinctive of Di- 
vinity, we are obliged to look upon their arrest and 
murder of God's Messiah, thus amply and variously 
accredited, as not only glaringly illegal in form, but 
remorselessly inhuman and infamously unjust in princi- 
ple and purpose. And hence the guilt of the Jews, no 
abatement of which can be plead, in view of the Divine 
purposes connected with the Death *of Christ. 

III.. Let us briefly attempt the vindication of the 
Divine conduct from the charge of injustice, connect- 
ed with the death of Christ. We remark, then, that 
it is important here, not to overlook the plainly revealed 
fact, that the death of Christ, so far as his own purpose 
and volition are concerned, was not coerced and violent. 
He gave himself for us. Had his death, as a sacrifice for 
the sins of men, been a forced and involuntary movement 
as it regards himself, we cannot see how the Divine con- 
duct could have approved itself to the intelligence of the 
universe, as correct and just, in even the permission of 
the event before us, inasmuch as he was without sin, 
whether personally or by hereditary imputation. When we 
reflect, however, that Christ became the subject of this 
fearful tragedy, with avowed and perfect freedom from 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN, 



95 



all extrinsic constraint, other than what he chose to sub- 
mit to, and look upon him as a Divine Being, possessing 
unlimited right of property in, and control over, his hu- 
man nature, having ''power correlative with such right 
''to lay down his life," and by a similar almighty voli- 
tion "to take it up again" — thus rendering his oifering 
of himself a perfectly voluntary personal nnovement, and 
not an involuntary act of sufferance — however criminally 
conceived on the part of his murderers — we can see no 
injustice in God in accepting the offered interposition 
of his Son in behalf of man, but the reverse : the 
Divine conduct appears infinitely consistent and praise- 
worthy. 

This view of the subject, is in perfect and striking 
analoo'v with the entire constitution and order, both of 
nature and Providence, and involves no new or doubtful 
principle of government or action, as charged by Infideli- 
ty, and even by some Christian creeds. Almightj^ God 
not only allows, but often requires it as a necessary con- 
dition of human virtue, that the self-chosen, voluntary toil 
and suffering of one man or nation, shall minister to the 
happiness and welfare, and even prevent the ruin and 
secure the salvation, of another ; and this, too, by the 
incurrence of toil and suffering, equivalent in many in- 
stances to that from which deliverance is sought and 
obtained. And thus the philosophy of atonement — the 
doctrine of salvation by the cross of Christ — is pre-an- 
nounced and authoritatively accredited both by nature 
and Providence, and cannot, with any show of truth or 
reason, be pleaded, as is often done, in bar to the recep- 
tion of the Christian Revelation. 

Deprive Christianity of the doctrine and glory of atone- 
ment by the death of Christ — dismantle the Gospel of the 
dread attraction of the Cross — and you have before you 



96 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



only the perished remains, the ghostly shadow, of a once 
sublime bnt now defunct and exploded theory ! 

ly. Let us next attend to the nature, cause and de- 
sign, OF the great internal struggle, the intense mental 

CONFLICT AND SUFFERING, OF OUR LoRD, AS DISTINGUISHED 
FROM HIS PHYSICAL SUBJECTION TO PUNISHMENT AND DEATH. 

The period immediately preceding his death, was one of 
intense moral suffering ; and, as the cause and purpose of 
such suffering could not terminate in a sinless being, it is 
necessary to seek them elsewhere, and otherwise ac- 
count for them. Regarding him as a man, with all the 
susceptibilities of our common nature in their utmost per- 
fection, and in full and vigorous action — beyond, perhaps, 
any other example in the history of our race — such suf- 
ering, in view of the destiny before him, was matter of 
structural organic necessity. Every law, every principle, 
the very physiology of his being, rendered the result in- 
evitable, under the circumstances. And hence he suffer- 
ed deeply, inconceivably, and beyond all force of former 
or subsequent example. 

But, in addition to this, his soul was pierced with unut- 
terable anguish, because the light of his Father's counte- 
nance was withdrawn, and the fullness of his Divinity no 
longer communed with his suffering humanity. In order 
to the fitness and virtue of the great sacrifice he was 
about to offer, that humanity was, in some sense, and to a 
fearful extent at least, left to itself, in this hour of peril- 
ous, unprecedented trial, l^or must it be forgotten here, 
that, in making his soul an offering for sin, as the great 
Lamb of Atonement, the hand of God rested upon him 
in displeasure, as our surety. ''It pleased Jehovah to 
bruise him." " God spared not his own son." /'He was 
stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted." " The chas- 
tisement of our peace was upon him." " By his stripes 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



97 



we are healed." And hence the extreme ano^uish that 

o 

signahzed the last hours of his illustrious life. Three 
times, in Gethsemane, his shrinking humanity depre- 
cated the cup. Three times he prostrated himself in 
prayer and appeal to his Father. And three times he 
arose in the conflict, resolved to reach the issue of his 
agony. 

Here, however, the utmost power of conception is at 
fault. At best, we can but approach the verge of the 
mvsterv. What reach or oTasp of thouo-ht or lanoaiao-e, 
can unfold the anatomy of his heart's anguish, or exhibit 
the chemistry of its bruised emotions ! The fearful alter - 
native was before him. If he did not die, he saw the 
wrath of his Father kindlino' in Heaven, scathino^ this 
fair creation, and lighting up the flames of hell. He saw 
generation after generation sinking beneath its fearful 
pressure, and swelling the congregation of the damned. 
He saw, he felt Infinite Majesty angry with man ; Heaven 
lost ; hell incurred, and the prospective thrones of eter- 
nity exchanged for the dark dungeons of perdition 1 
The untrodden wine-press of the wrath of God was before 
him. The unequal hour of Almighty conflict had arrived. 
Earth was burdened with children about him, and Heaven 
lined with squadrons above — but ''of all, there was none 
to help ! " In the might, therefore, of his own invinci- 
ble purpose, alone and imaided, he met the dreadful 
alternative. And hence his agony — the fearful exor- 
dium of the mysterious drama upon which he was en- 
tering. 

The great design of the internal sufi'erings of Christ, 
?.onnects itself directly with the one great atoning — the 
grand redemptive act of his history — his sacrificial death. 
And is not the efteet, the end, sufficient to explain the 
cause, the means, giving birth to the result ? Beside 
5 



98 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



all that the Scriptures say on the subject, the circum- 
stances alone attending his death, demonstrate it to be 
the most important event that has ever occurred in the 
history of man. Prophets, apostles, martyrs and heroes, 
have been stoned, burned, banished, impaled and sawn 
asunder ; multitudes have perished in battle ; thousands 
have lighted up, with their expiring groans, the fires of 
conflagration ; the earthquake has absorbed its myriads ; 
pestilence, with miasmatic breath, has poured putrefaction 
upon the lungs of pallid millions ; kingdoms have sunk 
in a night, and empires crumbled in a day ; but, no event, 
that lives in the page of history, has ever been so attest- 
ed by nature and nature's God, as was the death of 
Christ ! And this can only be accounted for, by viewing 
his death, to which his internal sufferings were prelimi- 
nary, in the light of a penal transaction — an atonement 
for the sins of men. The Word, the Providence, and the 
Works of God, equally with the faith and hopes of the 
Church, all conspire signally to attest the dignity of the 
suff'erer, and the grandeur of the sacrifice 1 

Y. Let us glance at some of the preliminary circum- 
stances ATTENDING THE DEATH OF ChRIST, AS NOT WITHOUT 
significance IN AN ATTEMPT TO UNDERSTAND THE GENERAL 

SUBJECT. Six days before it occurred, by a full disclosure, 
he prepares his disciples for the event, in the guest- 
chamber at Jerusalem. With prophetic solemnity he cele- 
brates the Passover in prospect of his death, and insti- 
tutes the Eucharist, to be observed in memory of it. He 
foretells his resurrection, and appoints a meeting with his 
disciples after it, in a mountain of Galilee. He is arrest- 
ed by a military cohort, and appears, severally, before 
Annas, Caiaphas, Herod and Pilate. And, after the sheer- 
est mockery of a judicial trial, is found guilty, upon 
the pre-arranged testimony of two perjured miscreants. 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



99 



He is condemned and sentenced to a mode of execution 
more infamous, painful and revolting, than any other in 
the criminal code of nations. In the Common Hall or 
Pretorium, he is despoiled of his raiment, scourged, buf- 
feted and spit upon, arrayed in mock royalty, crowned 
with thorns and sceptered with a reed. From the pave- 
ment of Pilate, he is seen bearino- his own cross throuo-h 
the streets of Jerusalem, until, sinking under its burden, 
one Simon, of Cyrene, was compelled by the crowd to 
bear it up the hill ! 

We pause, to ask, was the compulsion, think you, ever 
regretted by him of Cyrene ? And, before we return to 
the accursed throng of his clamorous crucifiers, let us 
throw a glance of mingled pity and admiration, at that 
amiable daughter of Paganism, the wife of Pilate, who 
so eloquently essayed to save his life ! Have thou noth- 
ing to do,'' said the anxious wife to her timid, time-serv- 
ing husband, with that just person ! When she came 
to die, was her touching plea for the man of Calvary 
foro'otten or left unrewarded ? But, meanwhile, the mad- 
dened reprobate mob, the whole mingled mass of Jewish 
spectators especially, are shouting for his blood to be on 
them and on their children ! Invoking his curse by 
voluntary imprecation ! And, God of Heaven, in wliat 
dreadful measure, shall the future fulfill the chosen 
anathema ! 

And here again we pause, to point you to another shade 
of relief in the picture. A few pious women followed 
him at a distance, weeping and bewailing him." Thank 
the God of our nature, there was one little group that 
did not riot in his torture 1 And, He, never unmindful of 
goodness, however humble, cast on them an eye already 
weighed down in death, and with a look of God-like phi- 
lanthrophy said, " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for 



100 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



me, but for yourselves, and for your children!'' This 
city, in which I am thought unfit to live or even die, shall, 
in forty years, be drenched with blood and buried in 
ashes. In two short years, Caiaphas, the relentless bigot 
of an apostate faith, who now disgraces the Pontificate 
and presides at my execution, shall wind up his history 
in suicide and death ! In the same length of time, the 
temporizing Pilate, banished and disgraced by imperial 
warrant as a traitor, shall, in like manner, die by his own 
hands ! Soon Herod, with his malice and mockery, smit- 
ten of God, accursed and uncofl&ned, shall be eaten up of 
worms ! This whole land shall be without altar or tem- 
ple, and even the Holy of Holies a God-abandoned deso- 
lation ! The high Priests, the Scribes, the Elders and 
Pharisees, and the whole multitude of the Jews, who, 
with blended voice from a thousand quarters, cry cru- 
cify him, crucify him," shall tJicinsdues he crucified^ until 
there shall not be room in the subburbs of this city, or 
upon the declivities of these hills, to erect crosses for 
them ! Crosses shall be wanted for prisoners and space 
for crosses, and the vengeance of Rome shall be glutted, 
by everywhere exhibiting to the eyes in Jerusalem, a sur- 
rounding horizon of crucified sufferers ! 

For this act of Deicide — an atrocity without parallel in 
the memoirs of worlds — the Jews, fugitives and vaga- 
bonds, branded and scorned, shall be scattered through- 
out every district of the earth, without a synagogue and 
without a temple, while millions of the present and suc- 
ceeding generations of them shall perish in their sieges 
with the belligerent Gentiles ! And, accordingly, more 
than eleven hundred thousand of them perished in the 
siege of their capital alone ; and, altogether, in the last 
great confiiict, not less than a million and a half. And 
already, without glancing at the future, near two thou- 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



101 



sand years have swept in darkness over the desolate 
pomp, the curse-bowed grandeur, of Jerusalem ! Well 
might the daughters of Jerusalem weep for themselves, 
and for their children especially. ISo longer a nation 
beloved of God, they wander without a shrine and with- 
out a priest. The four quarters of the globe attest their 
dispersion and publish their infamy. The page of histo- 
ry is, in every land and nation, stained with their blood ; 
and every wind of Heaven bears to the ear of insulted 
Majesty, the story of their wrongs and the record of their 
sighs ! 

YI. We now approach the final scene of our Lord's 
SUFFERINGS. We are now arrived at the foot of the fata] 
hill. The crowd rush with infuriate frenzy, that their 
eyes may drink the blood, and their ears the groans, of 
murdered innocence. The Cross receives a horizontal 
posture. The suffering Son of God is stretched upon it. 
His unresisting hands and feet receive their relative cru- 
ciform position, and the hardy, practiced executioners, 
with massive hammer and rugged nail, are in haste to 
give the ponderous blow that spikes the sacred humanity 
of the Son of God to the fatal wood ! The Cross is 
reared ; and, by a fearful, vehement concussion, its foot 
is deposited deep in the mortised rock ! 0 God ! what 
an appeal this horrid distension must have been to the 
utmost capacity of suffering, tearing the impaled nerves, 
and muscles, and tendons of his sacred hands and feet, 
and sending sick convulsion to the heart and brain ! 
Even at this distance of time and space, the heart is col- 
lapsed with a death-like feeling at the bare thought ! 

But we live again when we reflect, that on that crucial 
engine there bleeds a victim whose death shall tell upon 
the destinies of earth to its latest hour, and become a 
rallying point of interest and action among all the worlds 



102 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



of God ! Now, however, all about him conspire, in 
circling thousands, to bow the knee in mock prostration, 
and invite him from the cross! ^*He saved others, let 

him save / "/ 

In this deed of more — of worse — than devilish venture, 
the ruthless soldiery and heartless mob — headed by the 
chief priests, and scribes, and elders — all united. Even 
his fellow-sufferers — though one afterward repented — 
suspended their death-sobs to reproach him ; and the 
shoutings and rejoicings of hell shook the base of the 
mountain — If thou be the Son of God, come down from 
the Cross and we will believe in thee " ! Eternal justice, 
where were thy thunderbolts ! Angels of God, where 
were ye encamped, or how restrained ! 

But the scene changes. Jesus calmly discharges the 
duties of a son to her who was identified with himself in 
the story of the Manger and the scenes of Bethlehem. 
He prays for those who were shedding his blood, and 
cries, in the language of the Chaldee paraphrase of the 
twenty-second Psalm, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabacthani " — 

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me " ! That 
these Jews and Pagans should forsake me is, indeed, not 
so strano;e : that men should withhold succor and ano-els 
withdraw their ministry, is what I expected : a faithless 
world and frowning skies might be borne: but, ''My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" When did I 
fail to enforce thy claims and assert thy rights ? When 
did I fail to make known thy name or publish thy love, 
by doing good to thy creatures ? When did the poor, 
the needy, the maimed, the halt, the blind, ask of me 
and they did not receive ? When did the heart-broken 
father ask me back his son from death, the ano-nished 
mother her daughter from the bier, or the orphan sisters 
an only brother from the grave, and I did not relume 



A PilOPITIATIO^f FOR Sllff. 



103 



the sightless eyeball and new string the chordless heart ? 
And is this the only recompense returned me ? Must I 
not only bear the malice of the mob and the fury of 
fiends, the desertion of earth about me and the murmur- 
ing' heavens above, but also have minoied in this unut- 
terable cup, the hidings even of my Father's face — ''My 
God, my God, ichy hast thou forsaken me " ! 

And now, when his suffering humanity had uttered its 
last complaint, and was about to receive its concluding 
shock — when Heaven and earth, as by common consent, 
seemed to stand aloof from the persecuted sufferer — now, 
when the freedom of Divine intercourse was checked and 
the paternal presence withdrawn — when, alone and singly, 
without friend or auxiliary, he had to contend with the 
conflicting elements of an angry universe — at this event- 
ful crisis, jSTature could no longer endure the complaints 
of her Creator : she shuddered, as with conscious horror, 
throuo-h all her dominions. The sun, shrouded in dark- 
ness, rolled back his chariot from the accursed abode of 
man, and refused to see the Sun of Righteousness, from 
whom he had borrowed his beams, sinking beneath a 
horizon of mingled darkness, blood and death 1 Rocks 
rent, the temple swayed, earth shook, and the trembling 
mountains prolonged the terror of the scene ! Men 
scoffed, hell howled, and the world above let fall a tear ! 
Death heard the cry of the world's redemption in his 
dark dominions, forgot his prey, and, dropping the 
chains with which his prisoners were bound, they start- 
ed into life, while angry destiny everywhere mantled 
creation with sackcloth and hung the heavens with the 
habiliments of mourning " ! 

And all this for man — for you — for me. The human 
soul was the stake, and by such an altar and such a 
sacrifice, it is proved to be of higher import and weight- 



104 



THE DEATH 01^ CHRIST, 



ier reckoning than the whole amplitude of a dead or in- 
sentient ■universe. That upon which Heaven has em- 
barked so God-like an expenditure of eflbrt and achieve- 
ment, must possess intrinsic, deathless value, 

YII. We notice the death of Christ as the accom- 
plishment OF PROPHECY, A2sD THE SUBSTANTIATION OF TYPE 
AND SHADOW IN THE SCRIPTURES OF THE OlD TESTAMENT. 

In him, the import of the one and instituted meaning 
of the other, have been clearly and triumphantly fulfill- 
ed. These desiderated what was to be accomplished by 
Jesus Christ ; and, in reference to this, in dying, he said, 
*'It is finished.'' Xot only did prophecy constantly 
point to the death of Christ as the consummation of the 
Patriarchal and Jewish dispensations and the comple- 
tion of the world's redemption, but all the types and 
shadows, institutions and symbols, by which they were 
distinguished, pointed, with no equivocal intent, to this 
grand event, as their substance and completion. 

If the victim flamed on the altar, it prefigured the Lamb 
of Atonement and the Ofiering of Calvary. If Moses 
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, it was to adum- 
brate the elevation of the Redeemer upon the Cross of 
suffering. Did the Prophet of Israel smite the rock in 
the wilderness, whose streams gladdened the desert ; 
that rock, in its typical significance, was Christ. Did 
the Pascal blood, sprinkled over the doors of the Israel- 
ites in the land of Goshen, turn away the sword of the 
destroying angel ; so does the blood of Christ, who is 
''the Lord our passover, slain for us." Were goats, in 
pairs, presented at the door of the Tabernacle of the con- 
gregation, the one slain as an expiatory sacrifice, and the 
other sent into the wilderness typically laden with ''the 
sins of the people it was to symbolize the oblation of 
him who, in his own body, bore our sins upon the tree,'* 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



105 



and is "the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of 
the world.'' 

Prophecy, we have seen, held the same language, and 
was in deep travail with the same immortal theme. With 
the Prophets this was the spring of action, the goal of 
hope and the guerdon of their wishes ; and, in depicting 
the great sacrifice of the Christian dispensation, every 
word seems to bend and break with the burden of a spe= 
cial and yet coincident revelation ! In whatever direction 
inspiration threw their vision, they saw the Cross — the 
Cross ! triumphantly rising upon the broad horizon of 
humanity, dissipating the gloom of nations and light- 
ing up with splendor the vast valley of the shadow of 
death 1 

In this light, our Lord himself obviously regarded his 
advent, and especially his death. And it was this sus- 
tained him. Look at his victorious patience and unsub- 
dued resolution amid the insults of his foes and the tears 
of his friends ! Even when the former shouted for his 
execution, and vociferated, "jS'ot this man, but Barab- 
bas " — a bandit felon — and his friends, stricken with 
despair and yielding to their feelings, shed tears of im- 
mortal disappointment, with God-like firmness he un- 
dauntedly braved the fury, as he had lately resisted the 
flatteries, of the world, and trampled alike upon its gild- 
ed vanities and clustering terrors. For he had before 
him the prospect of his passion. He looked forward to 
the period when countless nations should load the altar 
of his crucifixion with the incense of piety, and time and 
space make haste to lay their spoils at the foot of the 
Cross, and herald the grandeur of his mission and his 
death ! 

And thus, as it was written in Heaven, so is it fulfilled 
on earth. What an irresistible concentration have we of 



106 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



prophetic events and pre-shadowed phenomena, in the 
life, death, and constantly enlarging extension of the pre- 
dicted empire, of the Son of God 1 

Finally : We invite attention to a few of the many 
reflections most forcibly suggested by the subject. 
And first, let us look at the death of Christ as a grand 
legislative expedient for the salvation of men. It is not to 
be regarded as originating good will in the bosom of 
Deity ; the supposition is as undeifying as it is unscrip- 
tural ; but merely as preparing a safe and honorable me- 
dium for its communication. 

Had our planet, after its defection, or rather the sin 
of our race, remained unpunished, other districts of God's 
moral creation might have been emboldened to sin, in 
the hope of impunity from an example before them. 
But in the death of Christ we have such an appalling dis- 
play of the evil, sin — such a magnificent illustration of 
the severity of God in controversy with a fallen world 
preliminary to its recovery — that now the supposition is 
utterly inadmissible. The death of Jesus Christ is hence 
conservative as well as corrective and remedial. 

What a stupendous miracle of moral legislation have 
we here ! By the very expedient making atonement for 
it, the evil of sin is punished with a force and energy, 
felt not only by the thrones of Heaven and amid the 
depths of hell, but, lest man should remain unmindful 
of the lesson and to render it more inefFaceably impres- 
sive, the steadfast columns of the visible creation sur- 
rounding him trembled with dismay, as if about to be 
loosened from their eternal fastenings ! 

Fearful, indeed, had been the curse and overthrow 
marking the evil of sin, inanterior ages of the world's his- 
tory, to say nothing of the ruin it had wrought in 
Heaven. Look at the destruction of the antediluvian 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



107 



world for example, unnumbered millions perishing in a 
day. And to this add all the judicial inflictions of 
Heaven from the curse of Cain to the fate of Judas, or 
rather from the first great lapse to the present hour. 
Yet each in segregation, or all in dread accumulation, 
failed to make the millionth part the impression made by 
the sacrifice of the illustrious Victim of Calvary ! It 
would seem all preceeding visitations of this kind, were 
soon merged in the chance and change of the world's 
engrossing drama — were buried in fable or evaporated 
in song-. But the death of Christ stands out in the soli- 
tude of its own preeminence, as the birth-scene of a new 
era. The cross of his humiliation became the visible 
boundary of opposing worlds — a theater of manifestations 
upon which the goodness and severity of God developed 
principles and results, destined to affect the elements of 
moral order, throughout all the masses of intelligence 
crowding- the universe of God. 

Let the conduct of those ivho crucified the Lord of glory^ 
he to us a fearful prophetic warning^ not to crucify him 
afresh^ and by the rejection of the Gospel, resuhject him, 
so far as we are concerned^ to the dishonor of his original 
expulsion from the bosom of those he came to save. Their 
sin was willful, as ours must be. The evidence is irre- 
sistible, that his murderers proceeded to compass his death 
against the strongest motives of light and knowledge, for 
both were in their meridian before them, as it regarded 
his supernatural character and claims. In vain, there- 
fore, did they make the will of God the blasphemed 
agency of their guilt and shame. Had they forgotten 
the prodigies of his birth and of his baptismal inaugura- 
tion at the Jordan ? Had they forgotten the God-reveal- 
ing wonders of his life and ministry, arresting their gaze 
in concentrated effulgence, during the three preceding 



108 



THE DEATH OF CHRIST, 



years ? How could they forget ? Were there not those 
standing about his cross, to whom he had restored the 
use and functions of the eye, the ear, the tongue, the 
hand, the foot. There were those there, it is likely, who 
had been raised by him from the bier and the grave. 
There too, perhaps, gazed the once mindless maniac, who 
first received from him the greatest, save one, of all God's 
gifts to man or angel — the power of thought. Did these 
unite in the malignant joy afforded by his sufferings, or 
did they bestow upon him the tribute of their tears and 
the expression of their regrets ? 

It has not, however, been left for us to bring the accu- 
sation against his murderers. We find the indictment in 
God and nature's own hand writing. The elements 
accused them at the time. The prodigies of the cruci- 
fixion convicted them on the spot. The impending 
darkness of the murmuring Heavens witnessed against 
them. The convulsed earth and disquieted deep broke 
silence to accuse them. The rent vail of the horror- 
struck temple bore testimony to the wrong, while the 
opening graves and rising dead so substantiate the charge 
of guilt, as to cover his murderers with the infamy in 
which they sought to involve him ! 

Thus, in conclusion, whether living or dying, let us 
identify the interests of time and the hopes of eternity, 
with the death and cross of Christ. His life exhibits a 
matchless outline of Christian virtue, and his death places 
before us a grand moral picture of what should be the 
concluding scene of our earthly destiny. Turn to the 
one and the other, and learn the dignity and value of 
your high-born nature ! Even when but a few moments 
of his last hour remained, and the dread sense of deser- 
tion extorted from him the filial lament ''my God, my 
God !" even then, his dying thoughts, as they still lin- 



A PROPITIATION FOR SIN. 



109 



gered in the torture of the tree, turned to man : Father, 
forgive them ; they know not vrhat they do." Know they 
do, too much of their victim and this tragedy, to allow 
them eicher virtue or humanity. I only ask that veno-e- 
ance may not be meeted to them, as they deserve. Of 
outrage and crtielty to me, they know themselves guilty ; 
but, in what age-protracted sequence this injustice shall 
be measured to them again, 'Hhey know not." If they 
did, this mountain instead of a scene that holds the 
harps of Heaven dumb with grief, would everywhere be 
spread with bended knees, would be vocal with the 
cries of anguish, and stained with the tears of peniten- 
tial regret. 

In death, as in life, let us look to one who was himself 
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and who, by 
living for our example and dying for our redemption, has 
thus fulfilled for us the highest possible mission of Heav- 
enly love. Here, then, let us repose. Because he lives, 
having vanquished death and triumphed over the power 
of the grave, we shall live also." 

Followers of Christ — Children of God, of every age, 
name and condition ! let this great event ever occupy 
your minds and your thoughts, your hearts and your 
lives. And in view of the most eventful passage con- 
nected with your scene of earthly trial here, in the 
chamber or the desert, by field or flood, w^hen you meet 
your fate, God Almighty grant the cross of your re- 
demption may be lifted up, to dissipate the terrors of the 
grave, and light your path to the bosom of his mercies, 
and the beatitude of himself — the regions of immortality, 
and the thrones of Heaven ! 



110 



MESSIAH S KINGDOM. 



SERMON IV. 

Messiah's kingdom, 

" The Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand, until 
I make thine enemies thy footstooL The Lord shall send the 
rod of thy strength out of Sion : rule thou in the midst of thine 
enemies. Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, 
in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning : thou 
hast the dew of thy youth. The Lord hath sworn «and will not 
repent. Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchisedek. 
The Lord at thy right hand shall strike through Kings in the 
day of his wrath. He shall judge among the heathen, he shall 
fill the places with the dead bodies ; he shall wound the heads 
over many countries. He shall drink of the brook in the way: 
therefore, shall he lift up the head." — Psalm cx, entire. 

It is certainly a remarkable coincidence, to say tlie 
least, that with the first denunciation of sin in the He- 
brew Scriptures, we have conjoined the promise of 
Messiah and the hope of recovery ; and that, accompany- 
ing the last threatened judgment in the closing prophecy 
of the volume, the same assurance is renewed, while the 
intermediate notices are so numerous, that a single Jew- 
ish exposition of the volume — the Chaldee Paraphrase — 
in customary and accredited use in the synagogues of 
Judea long before the Christian era, enumerates between 
seventy and a hundred predictions, having reference to 
the advent and kingdom of Messiah. Of all these 
prophecies, we have the sum and the substance in the 
text. Hence styled, by some of our old Divines, Symholum 
Davidicum — the creed of David. 

The history of redemption in the Christian Scriptures, 
is but the fulfillment and evolution of its promise in the 
Jewish ; and of the truth and force of this remark, the 



Messiah's kingdom. Ill 

text is a very striking illustration, as forcibly shown by 
St. Paul, in more than one connection. And, accordingly, 
it has been the common conviction of the Church, that if 
ever the assurances of omniscient truth are verified to 
human consciousness, and theHill of God be seen beaming 
with light and smiling with life, it will be in the accom- 
plishment of the prophecy to which we now invite your 
attention. 

That this Psalm, penned not less than twenty-eight 
generations before the era it celebrates, relates to the 
Messiah of the Old Testament and Savior of the Xew, is 
a position which has obtained the common suffrage of all 
antiquity and modem commentary. It is, perhaps, alto- 
gether the finest, the most comprehensive, epic represen- 
tation of Messiah's reign found in the Bible. It is an 
exhibition of him full glowing and impressive, in his 
person, relations and achievements. In the dramatic 
language and scenery of this inimitable prophecy, like 
Melchisedek in Moses, Agamemnon in Homer, and 
JEneas in Yirgil, our Lord is represented as a Prince, a 
Priest and a Hero. Claimino' the dominion, effectino^ 
the atonement, and triumphing over the hostility of the 
world. 

Our object, in the remarks we propose, will be to 
analyze the different parts of the text, divest it of what- 
ever obscurity may seem to attach to its imagery, and 
present you with what we conceive to be its true prophet- 
ical meaning. 

That the personal dignity of Messiah — the essential 
grandeur of his nature and character — constitutes the most 
distinguishing feature in the prophetic picture before us, 
must be obvious we think to most readers of the Bible, * 
and truth and duty require, that it receive a proper share 
of attention. We would accord the fullness of this claim, 



112 



Messiah's kingdom. 



without restriction or compromise. We would evade 
nothing of its point or significance. We would affirm it, 
however imperfectly, in all the unmeasured grandeur of 
its nature and import. We attempt this, however, in no 
elaborate argumentative form, but by a familiar, practi- 
cal blendino' of statement and aro'ument, so as to instruct 
and interest, if possible, without fatiguing you. 

To the extent we can suppose you sufficiently indifferent 
or prepossessed, from whatever cause, to pore over the 
pages of Xenophon and Thucydides, Livy or Sallust, with- 
out having your attention especially directed to the mind 
of Greece or the majesty of Rome, we must be prepared to 
suppose, that, under some similar preoccupation of view 
and feeling, you may study Christianity, without regard- 
ing the Godhead and grandeur of its Author, as substan- 
tive principles of the Christian system. We are glad to 
know, however, that, in the whole range of the christiani- 
zation of our world, comparatively few have learned 
Christ in this way. And that, whatever may the semi- 
pagan, the pseudo-philosophical faith, the light and dul- 
cified morality, obtaining in many of the pulpits of mod- 
ern Christendom, sustained by creed, liturgy and com- 
mentary, and thrown around them like a chevcmx-dt-Jrize, 
in the Encyclopedias, Reviews, Poems, Magazines and 
Miscellanies of our current literature, when we turn to the 
Jewish Evangelical and Christian Scriptures, we find 
them, during a term of more than thirty centuries, hold- 
ing the same graphic, but one consistent, language on this 
subject — that Messiah is ''Immanuel, God with us" — 
''The Mighty God" — ''God manifest in the flesh" — 
''The true God and Eternal Life." 

We would not dogmatize. Others may honestly enter- 
tain very diff'erent views ; but, to our conception, if the 
personal dignity and official relations of Jesus Christ, as 



Messiah's kingdom. 



113 



the great foundation of our common hope, be not of vital, 
of fundamental, importance in the Christian scheme, the 
incautious penmen of the Bible have strangely misled us, 
by an improper, unwarranted use of language, and as it 
regards the true character, and claims of Christ, have, 
by giving us a deceptive revelation, only honored Heav- 
en by leading earth astray," and vre cannot resist the 
withering conviction, that, with regard to this subject at 
least, they might better have bequeathed the mere alpha- 
bet of the languages in which they wrote, and left us to 
ourselves ; for then we should not, as upon the hypothesis 
we oppose, have been compelled to seek a meaning in the 
sacred writings, disavowe-d by the very terms in which it 
is said to be conveyed. To be able to confide in the lofty 
commission of the Son of God, as equal to the task of 
uplifting our fallen nature to fellowship with the Di\dne, 
we must, as we reason on the subject, regard him as self- 
existent and almighty — the creator and ruler of all — up- 
holding the rights and claims of Heaven, and at the same 
time retrieving the guilt and doom of earth. 

In order to just and comprehensive views of Messiah's 
claims, it will be necessary that we notice him, as do the 
Scriptures, in his fre-exisieat^ his militant.^ and his glori- 
fied states and rtlu 'oii'. ; ' ' ' •■ Scriptures 

of the ISTew Testame iu mi. - : - ^^'^*^e of the 

Old. h 't us iriquire. then, first and hnefby. what they re- 
veal, with regard to the pre-existence a'nd original glory of 
Jesus Christ. These unerring expositions of the elder and 
less perfect revelations of the Bible, inform us with point 
and directness, and without preface or the ceremonv of 
anticipating doubt or contradiction, that he is ^' from 
Heaven " — that he " came down from Heaven " — that he 
''ascended up where he was before *' — that he is from 
above" — above ail " — existed ''in the beo-innino: " — 
5^ 



114 



Messiah's kingdom- 



was ''in the bosom of the Father " — had ''glory with 
the Father before the world began" — that he "came 
forth from the Father " — ^was " before Abraham " . and 
" before John," although, in the order of time, his birth 
occurred ages after the first, and the last was known to be 
his senior ; that " the Father loved him before the foun- 
dation of the world " — that he was a " Lamb slain from 
the foundation of the world " — that he "was sent " — was 
"given" — "came" — was "made flesh" — was "Alpha 
and Omega" — "beginning and end" — " first and last"— 
"was, is, and is to come "—" Prince of Life" — "Lord 
of Glory" — was "rich and became poor" — "all things 
were made by him " — " was before all things "—"and by 
him all things exist." Thus the preexistence of Jesus 
Christ, affirmed in the text by the declaration of a decree, 
long anterior to his manifestation in the flesh, is every- 
where expressly or incidentally assumed in the New Tes- 
tament; and we should be wanting to ourselves, and 
should not less certainly derogate from the glory of our 
subject, did we fail to give it due and distinguishing prom- 
inence. This follows especially from the 5th verse of 
the text, which is a direct apostrophe to God the Father, 
in which the Son receives the distinctive denomination of 
"Jehovah;" for the Jehovah, as every one must per- 
ceive, who "strikes through kings in the day of his 
wrath," is the same who " drinks of the brook in the way, 
and lifts up the head ; " and that this is Messiah, no one 
we must think ever doubted, who could not doubt with- 
out difficulty, or believe without evidence. 

To the same eff'ect with the New, is the language of 
the Old Testament. Here he is everywhere spoken of, 
and always proposed, as then actually existing, and pre- 
eminently exalted in glory, unlimited, and everlasting. 
The whole volume teems with notices and disclosures to 



MESSIAH S KINGDOM. 



115 



this effect. In Genesis, as ''the seed of the woman," he 
was to obtain a distinguished triumph over the powers 
of darkness. As the " seed of Abraham," he was to 
invest himself with glory and conquest in the gate of his 
enemy." To both Isaac and Jacob, he was promised as 
the great source of good, in whom all contemporary and 
successive ''nations" were to be "blessed;" and the lat- 
ter represents him as the great object of religious confi- 
dence on the part of the gathering " millions who should 
repair to him for life and happiness. In Deuteronomy, 
Moses announces him as the great Lawgiver of the uni- 
verse, and predicts the overthrow of those who reject him^ 
In jSi umbers, Baalim, the immortal soothsayer, rapt in 
the vision of ascending years, ascribed to him the illumi- 
nation and dominion of Israel. Job claims him as his ever- 
living and redeeming God. David represents him as en- 
throned in Sion, and extending his kingdom inimitably, 
in every direction. He pronoimces his throne ''eternal, " 
styles him "Jehovah," and quotes the "heavens" as 
"the work of his hands." The prophet Agur styles him 
" God's Son," a thousand years before the birth of his 
humanity. Solomon declares him "Chief among ten 
thousand and altogether lovely." Isaiah soars above all 
height, and his glowing pages depict him as "Immanuel, 
God with man" — "the mighty God and everlasting Fa- 
ther" — "the Jehovah, God of hosts, and only Savior." 
Jeremiah proclaims him "Jehovah, our righteousness." 
Ezekiel declares him the " only shepherd" whose "fold" 
is the unnumbered Israel of God. Daniel publishes him 
the object of worship among all nations, and declares his 
"kino-dom" without limit and "without end." Hosea 
predicts that " Jehovah will save the people by Jehovah." 
Joel says expressly, as quoted by St. Paul, that he is "Je- 
hovah," and that " all who call upon him shall be saved," 



116 



MESSIAH S KINGDOM, 



Amos declares him the ''great Tabernacle," symbolized 
by that of David. Obediali tells us be shall be the ''de- 
liverer in Mount Sion and shall possess the kingdom." 
In Micah, he is "Ruler in Israel, and his goings forth are 
of old, from everlasting." In Zephaniah, he is the 
" Lord God in the midst of Jerusalem and his people." 
In Haggai,. he is "the desire of all nations," filling the 
teniDle of the livino- God with olory. In Zachariah, he i& 
" Jehovah sent by Jehovah " to the nations ; also, Jeho- 
vah "pierced," as attested by St. John. In Malachi, who' 
concludes and confirms all these prophetic notices, he is> 
"Jehovah, the messenger of the covenant," and "Lord 
of the temple " — " the Lord God of hosts," before whom 
the Baptist was to "prepare the way." Here, then, we 
have more than a score of Heaven-instructed teachers — 
ail conspiring, as we understand them, in the solemn 
attestation of the supreme dignity and excellence of God's 
Messiah. Establishing the fact of his preexistence, and 
the underived nature of that existence, long anterior to 
his appearance and presence among men. 

But again, in h'u viilitant state, on earth and among 
men, he claimed and displayed the same nature and per- 
fections. When first introduced into the world, he was 
proclaimed the "God" of adoring "angels," He re- 
quired expressly, that "all men should honor the Son 
even as they honor the Father," In what way and to 
whatever extent we homage the perfections of the Infin- 
ite God, Ave are required to honor him. He taught, that 
those " who had seen Him -had seen the Father, " because 
"he and his Father are one." " Whatsoever things the 
Father hath " or doth, within the compass of eternal ex- 
cellence or almighty power, " these hath " and doth "the 
Son also." "The Son quickeneth whom he will," wheth- 
er from the inanition of the grave, or the more fearful 



Messiah's kixgdom. 



117 



lethargy of sin. He was to ''raise himself from the 
dead/' and Heaven and earth bare witness that he did so. 
He announced himself "Lord of the Sabbath" — claimed 
equality with God — " forgave sins" in fact, and received 
Divine honors in form. He claims the simature of un- 

o 

created, continual existence. "I Am," is his self-select- 
ed name, his own chosen designation ; and from his name, 
his titles, expounded by his Word and works, we are to 
infer his nature and deduce his claims. 

Let us attend, then, to the evidence of his works w^hile 
upon earth, and the whole range of attestation to the Di- 
vinity of his claims, as God manifest in the flesh. The 
phenomena attendant upon his birth — the presence of the 
star-guided Magi, and the out-burst of celestial harmo- 
ny from heavenly visitants, proclaimed him the long- 
wished for, and now welcomed "deliverer," who had 
been the great theme of primeval prophecy, and who was 
destined "to turn away ungodliness from Jacob." When 
a mere child, as the son of Joseph, he displayed Omnis- 
cient discernment in the confutation of the learned and 
sagacious Doctors in the temple. At his baptism on the 
banks of the Jordan, the powers of the world to come 
vouched the Divinity of his mission. In the Mount of 
Temptation, he foiled the sagacity of hell, by the defeat 
of her sovereign 1 In Cana of Galilee, the elem^ents 
owned his creative mandate, while water, casting off the 
immemorial law of its nature, blushed to wine ! In a 
fisher's hovel upon the bank of the lake of Genesareth, 
"the mother of Peter's wife " Vr-as taught, that disease 
and death obey his voice ! Thirty miles from Caper- 
naum, he spoke, and the " l^obleman's son " in that city, 
sprang in the same moment from his bed of fever, and 
was well 1 The stormy Vv^ave of the sea of Galilee — the 
surging roll of the agitated Tiberius — felt his presence. 



118 



MESSIAH^S KINGDOM. 



and the one was still, while the other became a pavement 
of adamant under his feet ! In the wilderness of Bethes- 
da, more than twenty thousand heard his voice, and 
hung upon his lips in breathless expectation, vfhile wit- 
nessing the supernateral multiplication of bread and fish 
in the hand and mouth of the eater 1 A beggar by the 
wayside, in rags and misery, directs his sightless balls 
toward the way that he was passing by ; stretching his 
palsied hands and feeling for information, he cries, ''Jesus, 
thou son of David, have mercy on me and, anon, he 
chides the unkindness of nature, by pouring the light of 
Heaven upon the new opening eyes of the blind-born 
gazer 1 Listen to that wail in '' the house of the Ruler.'* 
Death had entered and stricken his daughter, the idol of 
a fond father's, a mother's broken heart. A moan was 
heard which it was felt earth might not help. But mark 
that hushed pause, as the trance of grief was broken by 
the sudden apparition of a stranger, bending in meekness 
and majesty beside the bed of death ! 'No sooner does 
he seem to commune with that cold and lifeless form, 
than the dead mass quickens beneath the winding sheet, 
and grasping the hand of the God-like stranger, the next 
moment the shrouded sleeper is weeping upon the bosom 
of her mother. 

A timid, fearful female invalid, diffident of all claim, 
addressed him not, but, approaching, ''touched him" in 
the crowd, and health-restoring virtue ran through all 
her frame from the contact ! He spoke, and the sea 
became the mint of a Roman coin, with the image and 
superscription of Caesar upon it ! His rebuke drove 
life from the eastern fig tree, and it withered at his 
wdll ! He said to the " deceased damsel, Talitha cuma,'' 
and death fled in horror from her bier ! He said to his 
friend Lazarus, four days after death and some time in 



Messiah's kingdom. 



119 



his grave, come fortli/' and instantly putrefaction be- 
gan to tremble with tbe vital spark, and the pulse of 
life to beat in the tomb! He said to demons, ''de- 
part/' and anon they fled to rejoin the damned 1 Con- 
cessions from the lips of devils and the mouth of hell, 
proclaimed him ''the Holy One of God." The beaming 
efiulgence of his Deity shone resplendent upon the 
Mount of Transfiguration ! At different times he de- 
ranged the functions of vision by simply willing it, and 
passed through the crowd without being seen ! In the 
numerous processions that attended him at different 
times, through the cantons of Jewry, those who had 
never walked '' ran before,'' and those who had never 
seen " opened their eyes," and the first object they saw 
was him who gave them sight ! 

Look at his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. !N"ow 
the disciples and the multitude publicly shouted him 
as their God and their Redeemer. IS'ow, they seem 
to have the full contentment of their utmost wishes. 
Now the whole city is moved. They strew the way 
with palms and flowers. They proclaim him the long 
expected heir of David's line and throne. The throng 
of joyful spectators rent the skies with the exulting ac- 
clamation, " Hosanna in the highest." Now, that he 
had laid the foundations of his kingdom in the hearts 
of his disciples, and, as the " Lord Jehovah " of prophe- 
cy, had taken personal possession of the temple, as the 
Divinity to whose worship it was consecrated, the streets 
of Jerusalem, the porticos of the temple, and the bend- 
ing heavens, resound with the continued hosannas of 
the multitude ; and we are told, that had these been 
silent, even "the stones" in the sacred pile of the tem- 
ple, and beneath their feet, would have been endued 
with voices to proclaim his titles and his grandeur ! 



120 



Messiah's laNGDOM. 



And, once more, look at the closing scene of liis most 
eventful life. He met death upon the Cross with no 
support from earth, save the tears of a few, and amid 
the insults of thousands. And yet his death was not a 
defeat. The prodigies of the crucifixion evidenced his 
Godhead, and threw ''the gazer on his knee.'' The 
terrific drapery that in that dread hour was thrown 
around the vast theater of nature, proclaimed the digni- 
ty of the sufferer and the grandeur of the sacrifice. 

In objection to a part of this evidence, it may be 
urged, that prophets and apostles wrought miracles as 
well as Jesus Christ. We reply — to say nothing of other 
classes of evidence so conclusively sustaining the argu- 
ment — that in every instance they did it in the name of 
another and higher power than their own. In every 
instance they invoked the power, and solemnly obtested 
the name of God, Messiah or his Spirit. This Jesus 
Christ never did. All the wonders of his life and min- 
istry were wrought in his own name, without appeal to 
another ; and the necessary inference is, that it was by 
an exertion of the inherent energies of Godhead within 
him. Hence, the objection is without weight or perti- 
nence, and the argument remains, in all its force, as 
irresistible as il is complete ; and, in the instance of 
Messiah, the energy that expanded creation is again 
seen in the suspension of its laws. The Infinite alone is 
equal to the grandeur of his works and the sublimity of 
his ministrations. 

The glorific'i st'ile. of idcssiah, which commenced at his 
resurrection, and was confirmed by his ascension and 
the subsequent descent of the Holy Spirit, includes prop- 
erly the whole range of liis regal administration. His 
resurrection not only contnmed the Divinity of his mis- 
sion, by breaking the bai s of dta^h and spoiling princi- 



MESSIAH'S KINGDOM. 121 

palities and powers, but leaving the grave in deliberate 
triumph, as he had said he would, he ''led captivity 
captive," and victoriously dragged to his chariot-wheels 
the conquered millions of death and hell ! And when 
he ascended in jubilant pomp through the immeasurable 
concave of the Heavens, had earth possessed immortal 
ears, she might have heard his princely heralds surprise 
the waiting thrones of eternity with the voice of thunder — 
''Lift up your heads, ye everlasting doors, and let the 
King of Glory in." Earth might have asked, in the 
dramatic language of prophecy, ''who is the King of 
glory ?" And Heaven had replied, earth has crucified 
him — " The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory 1" 
Such was the regal triumph, the stupendous inaugura- 
tion of the Son of God ! 

And thus, in his preexistent, militant, and glorified 
states and relations, the peculiar and exclusive designa- 
tions of Godhead belong to Messiah, and acts and works 
distinctive of Deity are ascribed to him. He is the 
appearing Jehovah of the antediluvian world — the un- 
created acting angel of the patriarchal and Jewish ages — 
the resident God of the tabernacle and temple, and 
supreme Head of the Christian Church, reigning amid, 
and controlling the interests and destinies of, the uni- 
verse, with a sway steady as the flow of time and 
enduring as the years of eternity. 

11. We notice his humiliation, passion and priest- 
hood. "He humbled himself." Although David's 
" Lord," according to the inspired declaration of the -text, 
wielding the scepter of universal dominion, yet, in his hu- 
miliation, he became his depressed, afflicted " Son." The 
"root" became the " ofi'spring " of David. "The 
mighty God, " " the child born." " The eternal 
Father," "the Son given." Temptation and suffering 



122 



Messiah's kingdom. 



in tlieir multiform aspects and bearings, may be regard- 
ed as the great sources of human misery, and to both 
these our Lord was signally subjected during his humil- 
iation on earth. As our representative, he first humbled 
himself, and was then re-advanced to the dignity of 
power and place at God's right hand — resuming that 
which was his own, jure nat'urali, before his manifesta- 
tion in the flesh. Unmeasured was his humiliation in 
becoming man. Still greater in consenting to die. 
Greater still in dying for man. But, in submitting to a 
death so inconceivably painful and ignominious as that 
of the cross, the wonder deepens into such sublimity, 
that, pausing at its boundary line, we can only repeat 
that ''he humbled himself." Almighty condescension 
could get no lower ! 

This is the great crowning mystery of our faith. The 
established order of Heaven and earth seems to have 
been inverted. The God of angels, such by right of 
creation, as already seen, was comforted, amid the 
sorrows of Gethsemane, by an angel of God. The 
Judge of the universe was arraigned before the Consis- 
torial seat of Caiaphas, and compelled to bear the 
engine of his own death and symbol of his infamy. He 
who had been used to the homao^e and salutations of 
Heaven from everlasting, had his hallowed cheek pollut- 
ed by the guilty lips of hell — those lips which had 
negotiated the covenant of his murder, and sealed the 
compact of his death ! Those almighty hands that 
built the stories of the heavens, that flung through im- 
mensity its mighty wilderness of suns and systems ; and 
those feet that, treading the sapphire plains of the heav- 
enly world — had the nations for a footstool — were spiked 
in agony to the cursed tree ! His brow that, from all 
the hoary annals of eternity, had sparkled with im- 



Messiah's kingdom. 



123 



mortal majesty, is now shaded beneatli a thorxiy dia- 
dem ! He, for whom Heaven and earth could not 
furnish a worthy train, is crucified between two thitT'es 1 
He, who rolls your rivers, supplies your springs, and 
bowls unbounded ocean in the hollow of his hand, said, 
''I thirst," and gall was all he got to drink! How 
measureless this surrender of claim ! 

He took our nature in a manger — was driven by 
Herod into Egypt — was obscurely educated in a cottage 
of Galilee — was tempted by the devil — was derided by 
his kindred — was traduced by the Jews — persecuted by 
the priesthood — betrayed by his disciples, and murdered 
by the world ! Here we have the ineffable climax of 
grandeur and humiliation. Spirit of the Heavens, teach 
us the import of a mystery so transhuman, and in the 
center of our conscious being, touch and penetrate the 
master springs of devout, of adoring emotion ! 

His passion. Deep did he drink of the cup of sor- 
row, and fearful and prolonged were his sufferings, 
before being exalted to the throne of equal glory at 
God's right hand. It would seem that all communica- 
tion of succor and support from the .Divine to the human 
nature, united in the person of our Lord, was voluntary 
and occasional, and did not result consecutively from 
such union. And hence his passion, predicable only of 
his humanity, and yet deriving virtue and consequence 
from his Divinitv — his pre-existino' oTandeur, oivino- 
glory and dignity to his humiliation. In becoming 
what he was not, he did not cease to be what he was 
before. Applying only to his humanity, his passion was 
a period of mysterious dereliction, of fearful desertion. 
His soul seemed to be eno-ao^ed in an ineffable conflict 
with the displeasure of Heaven. Whatever confidence 
he had in God his Father, or in the final indissolubility 



124 



Messiah's kingdom. 



of his person, it is evident lie labored under an utter 
snspenclon of heavenly comfort. The passion was a 
sev-i^e and uneqiialed trial of the natural affections and 
feelino's, as well as moral virtues and sentiments of our 
Lord, together with a fearful confluence of penal afflic- 
tion and calamity. It was ''the hour and power of 
darkness " arrived in the plenitude of their horror, the 
mingled gloom of their blended final visitation. 

During the last dreadful conflict, the scales of Al- 
mighty justice seemed, for a time, to tremble in fearful 
equipoise. It was an eventful crisis, because a war of 
elements infinite. The almighty Hero of the struggle 
threw himself into the dread appalling breach of a 
vrorid estranofed from God, and the strife of contendino- 
destinies shook the pillars on which its amplitude was 
poised. I^ature throughout immensity sympathized 
with the suff'erer, and her avenging ministries rebuked 
[he apathy of earth, as rocks and mountains, uniting 
with the darkened heavens, broke their eternal silence 
to do him homage and vindicate his claims. 

His Priesthood, By the oath of God our Lord was 
constituted a ''Priest forever" — literally an "eternal 
Priest " — not after the Levitical Institute or Aaronic 
Priesthood, but upon the anterior Melchisedekan model — 
after "the order or similitude of Melchisedek." This 
extraordinary character, a Divinely accredited legal 
Priest, was, by birth and residence, a Gentile, a Cana- 
anite, and, therefore, without the pale of the Abraham- 
ic family, or Patriarchal Church. He was, by God's 
special appointment, both Prince and Priest. In the 
priestly office he was without predecessor, coadjutor, or 
successor. ISo one vrent before, no one accompanied, 
and no one followed him. His priesthood was not 
restricted and provincial as was that of Aaron, but 



Messiah's kingdom. 



125 



universal with regard to man. He was Priest of the 
most high God'' in behalf hj right of all men, and in 
these respects may be resembled to the Great High 
Priest of the Christian Dispensation. 

In the priesthood of Melchisedek we hare a most strik- 
ing prefiguration of the priesthood of Messiah. The 
world was his birth-right, and he, as a Priest, was the 
common property of all — whether Abraham or the 
Canaanite. God's human creation — the world of man — 
was his home, and all had a right to his altar. He was 
a priest out of the ordinary cotirse of things, by extraor- 
dinary appointment and special provision ; and so of Jestis 
Christ, the great Christian Propitiation for the sins of 
the world — the unnumbered millions of our kind. Turn- 
ing to the priestly functions of the Leviticum, we find 
them distinguished by much external show and secular 
pomp, ^sot so the Melchisedekan priesthood, the proper 
prototype of Messiah's. Its grandeur stood intimately 
connected with its intrinsic excellence and instituted 
meaning. The legal import of both was the same, and 
the final accomplishment of their object, is to be met with 
in the death and priesthood of the world's Redeemer — 
the eternal Melchisedek of the Christian system. 

HI. His REG-AL DOMIXIOX AXD SOVEREIGr^' RULE. His 

scepter comprehends '-'all power in Heaven and in 
earth." His is a universal sovereignty — a strictly pleni- 
potentiary administration. It is an investiture involving 
an entireness of right and amplitude of power, without 
limit and without control. He has a two-fold claim upon 
the faith and obedience of the world, he made us and 
afterward redeemed tis. As ''God over all," his right 
to rule is inherent, and he has a derived, bttt equally 
well founded right, in view of his Messiahship and ''obe- 
dience unto death;" on which account, as Mediator, he 



126 



Messiah's kingdom. 



is exalted to the regal lieutenancy of Heaven and earth, 
the supreme administration in the illimitable kingdom of 
Jehovah. 

His regal jurisdiction, the extent of his kingdom, em- 
braces the universe ; comprehending the rule he exer- 
cises, his reign proper, together with the regions and 
subjects ruled, whether sought in connection with our 
world, the highest heavens, the planetary system, the 
stellar hosts, or hell beneath. He reigns with absolute 
knowledge, imiversal presence, almighty power, infinite 
rectitude, and unlimited authority. This rule regards 
the world of man especially. He rules by his grace in 
relation to his people, and by his judicial providence in 
relation to his enemies. He holds the scepter as well 
for the destruction of his enemies as for the salvation of 
his Church and people. Witness Judea, the subversion 
of its state and polity — the excision of its tribes and 
families, and yet the salvation of a remnant. Witness 
the disastrous overthrow of the persecuting powers of the 
Pagan world, and the preservation of the Church not- 
witli Stan din o\ 

o 

The constitution of this kingdom, chartered and con- 
firmed before its actual extension over the face of our 
world, is the covenant of redemption first announced in 
Paradise, enlarged upon with Abraham, further unfolded 
at Sinai, illustrated by prophets, and finally perfected 
and confirmed by the advent of Messiah. This covenant 
includes the believing and obedient of all ages and na- 
tions — whether before Christ or after Christ, pre-chris- 
tians or post-christians, children of the circumcision, and 
the baptized of every lip and every name. 

The Jews, the Heathen, the wide world with its teem- 
ing population, infernal agency, and the degeneracy of 
our common nature, the pride of intellect, and the turbu- 



MESSIAH'S KINGDOM. 



127 



lence of passion— these are the enemies and elements in 
the midst of Tvhich Messiah reigns, and every fifty years 
of his administration, for nearly sixty centuries, has given 
to heaven or hell, from otir planet alone, some five hun- 
dred millions of immortals, to live and sing in the one, 
or sigh and suffer in the other ! He holds in his hands 
the life, happiness and destiny of his subjects. Life and 
death, hlessing and curse, heaven and hell, are all -^ithin 
his gift. His personal rights, as we have seen, are abso- 
lute ; and the prerogatives of his rule universal and 
untransferable. 

The principles, the intere-sts, the bearings and the 
results, of truth and piety, these constitute Messiah's 
empire upon earth ; and, from his throne of thrones in 
Heaven, he will assert and defend, maintain and extend 
it. His reign mingles splendor and happiness with trial 
and danger, and combines in one mighty scale the vast 
extremes of good and evil, as determined by the character 
of his subjects. 

The reign of Messiah is not, as many assume, a mere 
parenthesis in the Divine administration. Spreading 
over the entire expanse of crowded immensity, through- 
otit the length and breadth of the universe of God, and 
comprehending all the circling dependencies of his em- 
pire, it goes back to the throne and crown of Jehovah, 
when the morning stars and ''sons of God shouted for 
joy ;" and, embracing every intelligence and every inter- 
est — all the forms and all o^^ades of beino% actual or 
possible — it stretches forward interminably, until we 
lose otirselves amid the infinities of the future, and only 
know that the templed millions of the blest, in the 
central dominions of Godhead, find the grandeur of 
eternity heightened by ''the Lamb " being " the light 
thereof!'' 



128 



Messiah's kingdom. 



IV. The means employed in the establishment and in 

ORDER TO THE SUBSEQUENT GLORY OF HIS KINGDOM. And 

first and principally, as distinctly assumed in the text, 
The Gospel of the grace of God, addressed to every rank 
and condition of fallen humanity, together with its corres- 
ponding publication. The laws of this kingdom are 
those of the Gospel and relate principally to the mani- 
festations of the Divine nature, the medium and method 
of acceptance with Heaven ; and, finally, the laws and 
rules of morality, the great principles regulating human 
action. How far the Gospel is entitled to the distinction 
accorded it in the text, the ''rod" or ''scepter'' of Mes- 
siah's strength, we must judge from fact and inference, 
from its past, present and future probable influence. 
History will fix attention on the past, observation on the 
present, and prophecy and analogy on the future. 

Appealing to fact and history then, we know not where 
to begin or how to select. In all time, what nation, not 
utterly savage, is not debtor to the cause we plead ? 
Where is it the star of his empire has not been seen 
peering through the gloom of nature's night ? Where 
is it that light has not arisen in darkness, to gild the 
gloom of earth's horizon, and direct the wanderer home 
to God ? Where is it that salvation's mornino- is not 

o 

breaking upon the world, as erst it broke, in bright 
and calm intelligence, upon the shepherd hills of Beth- 
lehem ! 

The present. Every brief term in the calendar of time, 
almost every day, adds some new province or kingdom 
to the widening dominions of the Son of God. No sun 
rises to track your heavens in splendor, that does not 
gild some new trophy of his reign. At every short 
interval the recording angel traces it on the pillars of 
immortality that the Gospel has conquered another 



Messiah's kingdom. 



129 



language of the babbling and lettered eartb, and soon it 
shall pour tlie salutary streams of light and life through 
the channels of a thousand dialects ! East, West, Xorth 
and South, through all the zones of earth, the mora] ^ 
midnio'ht mantlino- the Trorld, is struo^oiino^ with the 
coming dawn ! Everrwhere over the might v expanse 
of outspreading nations, light is gleaming and flashing 
through the firmament of mind, giving direction to the 
hopes, and shedding its radiance upon the path, of 
humanity. 

The future. The vast river of Christian munificence 
and enterprise, is rolling, in Xile-like grandeur, its many 
and its mighty tributary streams in every direction. 
**The handful of cornels already scattered upon the 
''tops of the mountains," and its fruit, in succeeding ages, 
shall wave like the forests of Lebanon, stirred by the 
breath and undulating in the winds of heaven ! The 
foundations of this kingdom are already laid in the hearts 
of millions, and the heavenly influence is every hour 
diff'using itself throughout individual and social man, 
and it shall sticcessively augment its rapidly accumu- 
lating tritimphs, until the '' obedience of faith" shall 
become universal, ''and all the world be Israel." 

It is in this way the future shall repay the mighty 
debt it owes the past. We will not dwell upon the plans 
and formula of Christian effort. The Bible, the Book 
of Books, shall every where operate its intended func- 
tions of light and influence — shall be received alike in 
faith and morals as the great Encyclopedia of man. 
While coextensively and bearing upon the world's con- 
version, the Church shall everywhere present the engag- 
ing eloquence of a holy life. 

In this way, Christianity shall stain the pride of all 
human glory, and subjugate the world, with all its way- 



130 



Messiah's kingdom. 



ward elements, to the sway of Messiah. Crime, with its 
myriad shapes and shades, shall cease, and men shall live 
and love, and suffer, as God would have them. The 
gilded curse of war and blood, shall receive its degraded 
level in the esteem of nations, and memory, in recounting 
visions of glory worthy of man, instead of dwelling 
upon the prowess of the Macedonian madman or the 
altar of Hannibal — instead of hovering over the victor 
standard of Scipio Africanus or him of Corsica— shall 
consecrate its hallowed recollections to the diffusion of 
peace upon earth" and demonstrations of good will 
to man.'' 

It is in these aspects and thus viewed, that the 
Gospel is the power of God." Let your eye range along 
the history of the world, and you will see that for ages, 
as now, it has been the great gulf-stream of moral influ- 
ence. Every hour in every direction, its light and power 
are invading inert resisting masses of mind and feeling, 
like the electric forces breaking loose from the poles 
and throwing their corruscations over the fields of heav- 
en and the homes and wastes of earth ! 

Y. The character and number of his subjects. They 
are his free, his willing people, flourishing amid the 
'^beauties of holiness." They are represented as will- 
ing, voluntary subjects — a people prompt and ready, ar- 
dent and impulsive. The Hebrew means ''most will- 
ing," ''self-devoted," or rather, "willingness itself." 
The concrete is lost in the abstract, and they are said to 
be "free-will offerings." 

They shall be an attached, devoted, and princely race. 
All idea of coercion or forceful constraint, beyond con- 
viction and persuasion, is precluded. Although receiving 
all from an intelligence and benevolence above, they are 
"willing" and cheerfully active, as self-determining 



Messiah's kingdom. 



131 



agents, influenced only bv the doctrines of motive — at- 
tracted by ''the beauties of holiness.'' 

The most obvious meaning of the third verse — this 
much abused and shamefully perverted passage — seems 
to be : Thy people shall be a ready, generous, and devo- 
ted people, in the day of thy po^vver ; that is, during the 
Gospel period, the ministration of the Spirit, the reign 
of the Holy Ghost. The day of Messiah's power, is the 
entire period of his reign, described in the text. It is 
the eventful era of his administration, as Head over all 
things to the Church." 

The day of his power contrasts with the day of his 
weakness, and succeeds to that of his humiliation. It is 
the ''lifting up of the head," after "drinking of the 
brook in the way." It is the grand interim between his 
ascension to the throne of legitimate empire, as Mediator, 
and the time when " spoiled principalities and powers " 
shall lie scattered in ruined grandeur at his feet ! 

The " morning" here, is beautifully represented as the 
productive maternal source of the dew, and the dew-drops 
at dawn of day, as the offspring of Aurora, or children of 
the morning. So Christ is represented as the great 
source of being and blessing, and we the children of his 
power and grace. His subjects are especially "the dew 
of his youth," and claim affinity with his birth. As the 
generation of dew connects "with the cloud and vapor of 
morning, so the assumption of our nature by Christ, his 
becoming an "Infant of days" — " God manifest in the 
flesh" — laid the foundation of our relation to him as his 
children. 

This fine piece of poetic imagery, however, unequaled 
in its beauty and force, relates perhaps principally to the 
number of Messiah's subjects, and seems to intimate that 
the dew of his progeny shall be as abundant as the dews 



132 



Messiah's kingdom. 



proceeding from the bosom of the morning. Messiah 
shall be born to men, and men in return, born to God, 
shall repair to his standard in crowds as numerous as 
drops of morning dew. And, going back to the date of 
the great proto-promise, The seed of the woman shall 
bruise the serpent's head," and forward to the final apo- 
calypse of his reign, who can number them ? He only 
who marshals the dews and rains of heaven. The dew- 
drops of the morning — the rain of the seasons — the grass 
of the earth — the stars of heaven — the sands upon the 
sea-shore — these, are the inspired similitude of their 
numbers, and the only arithmetic by which we count 
them ! 

Already the Church embraces the most improved and 
improving parts of the world — the skillful in arts and the 
powerful in arms, the most distinguished in mental attain- 
ment and moral worth, the wealthiest and the wisest. 
And if not satisfied with this, estimate the millions cen- 
tuplicated of Messiah's subjects, whose pavilions are al- 
ready planted on the plains of immortality, add to these 
the millions now enrolled and yet to be mustered among 
the hosts of God, before the final triumph of Christianity. 
Let earth during that triumph number but thirty gene- 
rations, of ten hundred millions each, and then count the 
throng, and find the place of their rendezvous ! 

Finally : The triumph of Messiah in the destruction 
OF his enemies, and the salvation of his Church and 
PEOPLE. By his enemies, comprehensively, we mean 
those men and associations of men, whether taken indi- 
vidually or in masses, who counteract the general good 
of his subjects, and the welfare of administration. These 
have been invariably defeated or destroyed, in all ages. 
They have been undermined and circumvented by the 
force of truth and the progress of opinion, or more fear- 



Messiah's kingdom 



133 



fully overthrown amid the struggles of passion and the 
explosions of violence. In all time, and wherever found, 
Messiah has subjected tlem to curse and rejection, ruin 
and overthrow. 

His enemies of antediluvian memory, for example, were 
instructed in the principles of the Patriarchal religion. 
Enoch prophesied, and Xoah was a preacher of right- 
eousness among them. The Spirit of Christ visited and 
strove with them, while shut up in prison, for the coming- 
wrath of the deluo^e. The lono- sufferino; of God Vv'aited 
for them. But they refused to repent. The flood came 
upon them, and we must leave eternity to tell the rest. 
Lot and family, doubtless, disseminated a knowledge of the 
true relioion amono- the children of the Plain" — the de- 
graded thousands of the doomed Pentapolis — but '-'their 
sin came up before God," the thunder and tempest of 
Heaven dug them all a grave ; and, after the lapse of fifty 
centuries, we look upon the ''sea of death," and read 
the story of its origin, as the monument and epitaph of 
" the sin of Sodom " and cities of the Plain ! The Genius 
of Prophecy, foreseeing the future idolatry and degrada- 
tion of the nations of Canaan, placed them under the 
ctirse and ban of the Almighty, and their memorial per- 
ished from among men. The confederation of kings, 
headed by Chedorlaomer, that attempted the overthrow of 
the Patriarchal Church in the Plain of Jordan, were en- 
tombed in death, amid the horrors of a universal slaucrhter. 
Egypt and Tyre, Babylon and ^N'inevah, Jerusalem and 
Rome, remain, to this day, imperishable memorials of the 
wrath of Heaven. Look at the Jews — cursed, scathed 
and scattered, "a nation peeled and trodden down," 
crushed and trampled beneath the insulting hoof of an 
unfeelino; world. Look at the seven churches of Asia,'' 
and the cities in which they were found — their noiseless 



134 



Messiah's kingdom. 



streets, hymnless temples, and desolate altars.. Look at 
Herod, Pilate, Julian, Maximian, Valerius, and the prin- 
cipal actors in the Neronian and Dioclesian persecutions 
of the Church — dark, gloomy and ghostly, are all our 
recollections of their madness. 

Look at the first grand Itahan Apostasy. Its progress 
was in character with its inception. Early in the fourth 
century, the tide of Imperial splendor, set in its favor 
under Constantine, soon crowded the Church, not with 
Christian converts, but with interested Pagan proselytes, 
and the transition was found at once easy and natural, 
from the worship of idols and the corresponding rites ot 
Polytheism out of the Church, to the adoration of images, 
the deification of relics, and other kindred observances 
within ; and thus, the Imperial State- Church, succeeding 
to the primitive pattern, was soon defaced and degraded 
by abominations that distanced the enormities of the my- 
thology, but late renounced in favor of the badge and bap- 
tism of a faith but little understood, and without prac- 
tical influence upon the heart or life. In such a state of 
things, the corruption of the Church proceeded apace. 
Nor was it long until the world was every where sunk 
in the most degrading mental vassalage ; and, under the 
withering control of a most seductive and yet appalling 
despotism, ignorance and stupidity, fraud and cunning, 
were canonized, and worth and piety transferred from 
the cross and scaffold to their reward and crown in 
Heaven. 

The arts and appliances of auricular confession and 
priestly domination, were, by a ready and facile commu- 
tation, substituted for the weightier interests of truth and 
piety. The Bible, as the sole charter of man's salvation, 
and the only rule of faith and action, superceded by the 
prevailing corruptions, was doomed to decay and disuse. 



Messiah's kingdom. 



135 



in the vaults of the Monastery, the dungeons of the Ab- 
bey, and dormitories of the dead. An ambitious and re- 
probate Priesthood, sought the road to preferment, pow- 
er, and exclusive sway over the conscience and resources 
of Christendom, by all the debasing means and arts of 
fraud, force and simony, until finally a lawless, God-for- 
saken Pontificate, assumes infallibility without defect, and 
claims supremacy beyond control 1 The temple became 
the sanctuary of abuse, and the priest the sentinel of 
crime. 

This state of things, calling so loudly for judgment and 
correction, continued to grow worse and worse, both as 
regards its extension and inveteracy, until the Reformers 
of the sixteenth century, in the true spirit of their mis- 
sion, each arraying himself for the combat, as if an angel 
fought at his side, leveled the artillery of Heaven against 
the whole empire of this stupendous imposture, and saw 
the battlements of anti- Christ, and the entrenchments of 
his vassal millions, one after another, sinking before the 
victorious arms of truth and reason. The power of the 
Apostasy was broken, and its final destruction began to 
connect itself with the regular operation of cause and 
effect. 

Look at the Arabian imposture. It seems to have been 
permitted only as a scourge for the correction of other 
evils. It is already fast working out its own evil destiny, * 
and rapidly hastening to ruin ; and, in due time, its pre- 
dicted overthrow shall be realized on the part of the 
Church, and the ruthless domination of Mohammedan 
tyranny and Moslem fanaticism, now extending not only 
from Egypt to Khorassan, and from Bagdad to Belgrade, 
as a thousand years ago, but over the fairest portions of 
Europe, Asia and Africa, shall be triumphantly destroy- 
ed The conquests of the Gospel shall return to the 



136 



MESSIAH S KINGDOM. 



East. Freedom and glory shall revisit the seats of pri- 
meval inspiration. Lost Judea shall be vocal with the 
hum of rejoicing millions. The last lingering Arab — 
the only remaining son of Ishmael — shall hail Messiah's 
gcepter, or resist his curse in vain ; and the once 
grand platform of the Oriental world, shall again become 
the theater of the most eventful destinies of man. 

Look at the insane fanaticism of Infidelity, in the in- 
stance of the God-rejecting republic, France, at the close 
of the last century. Look at a gallant and powerful 
people — a highly civilized, a proud and lettered nation — 
throwino' down the o-auntlet of defiance at the foot of the 
throne of God, and boldly waving, as the flag of national 
distinction, the standard of atheism before his face ! 
Look at millions, shrewd, artful, and malignant, leagued 
and banded in the shape of turbulent propagandists, for 
the extermination of all religion. Look at prince and 
subaltern, in this work of death — encyclopedist and 
pamphleteer, philosopher and demagogue, uniting in 
giving organic structure and form to impiety, elevating 
unbelief to the dignit}^ of a science, and reducing blas- 
phemy to a trade ! 

Of the work of judgment, in the progress and sequel 
of this terrible crusade, we need not tell you. The 
principal actors sunk, one and all, as if a glance from 
God had withered up their being. The minister of 
vengeance seems to have blasted their gaze with his 
accusing presence, and they perished before the rebuke 
of him in whose eye empire is a speck and man an 
atom! All this we have seen, and 'yet we fear the 
reckoning is but commenced, and that the future will 
exact still more fearful atonement. 

Such has been, and such will continue to be, Mes- 
siah's treatment of his enemies. While, on the other 



Messiah's kingdom. 



137 



hand, liis true and faitliful subjects, as heretofore, shall 
always prosper. Under whatever severity of trial, they 
have always triumphed. 

All possible means of oppression and torture, have 
been resorted to without effect. The ax, the cross, the 
stake, the fire, the amphitheater, and decapitation — 
these only threw a resplendent halo of glory around 
the ascendino' martvr. The invisible future charmed 
his vision, and the unwitherino- freshness of immortal 
joys animated the triumphant expectant. Every in- 
fernal project concerted to extinguish the hopes and 
being of the true Church of Christ, only amplified the 
sphere and augmented the number of her triumphs. 
The executioner beheaded one Christian, and ten new 
believers hallowed the place of death. A second was 
transferred from the flames to Heaven, and a multitude 
was present to consecrate the scene. A third sprang 
from the rack to a throne, and the convinced execu- 
tioner avenged his death by following the example of 
his life 1 This state of things has distinguished the 
past. An analogous state of things now exists. And a 
corresponding train of successive events is foretold upon 
the faithful page of prophecy. 

The Gospel is already published in more than two 
hundred languages of the vocal and reading earth. 
Every where, from sunrise to the ocean of the West, the 
nations of Pao^anism are beoinnino- to share its lio^ht. 
The idolator of the Gano-cs, and the savao^e of the Pa- 
cific — the Tungusian wanderer beneath the Torrid Zone, 
and the shiverino- Icelander, amid his banks and bero;s 
of eternal ice and snow — have caught the radiance of 
Redemption's Star, and, with tears of joy, are hasten- 
ing to the Cross. 

Spreading out the map of the world before you, and 
6^ 



138 



Messiah's kingdom 



from its Pagan, turning to its anti-christian divisions, 
you see the once Imperial Mother of Christendom's 
abominations, with impotent resistance, gradually relax- 
ing her lawless usurpation of right, human and divine. 
Convulsed by earthquake change, fear is driving her to 
reforms and concessions, which shame and virtue urged 
upon her, in vain, for more than a thousand years. 
Slowly, but certainly, her leprous impurity is working 
out its own retribution, and the world's last gaze upon 
the mother of harlots," shall leave her prostrate before 
the refulgent chastity of the bride of Christ ! 

The Greek Church, too, is slowly awaking from the 
torpor of ages, and, although destitute of primitive 
vitality, and shorn of her grandeur under the Byzantine 
Caesars, she is still seen in her primeval homestead, 
Greece and its Isles, in her numerous Oriental Patri- 
archates, and throughout the Imperial Czardom of the 
Russias, gradually emerging from a sea of dreams and 
darkness tumultuous, into liberty, light, and life. 

The imposture of Mecca, whose baptism is blood, and 
its eucharist slaughter, and whose gigantic form so 
long appalled and darkened the Eastern world, is fast 
nodding to its fall ; and soon the crescent, no longer 
beaming upon the standard of bandit legions, shall be 
seen sinking beneath a horizon of oblivion, blood, and 
death. Instead of the Saracen minaret, the banner of 
the Cross shall float on the hill of Calvary, and throw 
the shadow of its folds over the tomb of the Redeemer 
and the homaged birth-scene of the world's redemp- 
tion. 

The great militant struggle we have sketched, is even 
now in a state of decisive evolution, and, in every di- 
rection, the advance of Messiah, resistless as the vo- 
litions of Godhead, is trenching upon the kingdom of 



Messiah's kingdom* 



139 



darkness. While we address yon, disciplined and foimi- 
dable columns, under the banners of Divine truth, are 
bearing down, Avith invincible steadiness, upon the terri- 
tories of sin and death. Christianity, with antao'onist 
aggressive power, is everywhere contesting the dominion 
of the human mind, by irresistible appeals to all the 
principles and passions circling within the vast vortex 
of human life, and on which character and destiny are 
made to turn for time and eternity. 

On the one hand, we see the proud colossal forms of 
impiety and unbelief crumbling beneath her assaults ; 
and, on the other, the Church in deep travail with the 
problem of reversion to primitive simplicity, and how 
she shall best realize the predicted amplitude of the 
coming triumph awaiting her, when her conquests shall 
be reckoned by degrees of latitude and longitude, and 
not, as now, by leagues and miles and tongues and 
tribes ! 

Finally. In glancing at the concluding fortunes, the 
last destinies of the Church upon earth, whether amid 
the shock of Apocalyptic revolution, or the bright and 
bloodless triumphs of Messiah's reign, robed in the maj- 
esty of moral dominion, and resplendent in the drapery 
of celestial beauty, the Church is seen passing through 
successive eras of improvement and perfection, each 
o-lowing with increasing splendor, until the bursting 
echoes of a world renewed, borne off upon the gale and 
brought up upon the breeze, shall revive the recollec- 
tion, and realize the burden, of the hymn of Bethle- 
Ixem — for the shoutings of the last harvest shall be the 
song that sowed the seed. Glory to God in the high- 
est Thought can go no further — emotion rise no 
higher. It is the last effort of language. The richest 
utterance of earth. And for all, with which God has blest 



140 



Messiah's kingdom. 



us, this acclaim is the most cherished return — -and as 
blessing is the theme, so glory'' is the song! We 
cannot explain the more than thrilling, the rapture 
kindling, epithet. It comprehends the illimitable good 
within the gift of the universal God, together with the 
enlarged capacity of man to enjoy and publish it ! 
Would to Heaven we better understood the meaning of 
the term ! Would to God its sacred sio^nificance mio-ht 
make every utterer more a Christian ! Would to God 
we could all unite and send it back to Heaven, as angels 
brought it down ! Would to God, that, over earth and 
sky, on all the paths of sound, we could hear it rolling, 
like the full-toned thunder of Heaven, pealing in grand 
harmony, throughout all its camps, its courts, and its 
quarters 1 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED. 



141 



SERMON V. 

DIVINE MERCY REJECTED THE GROUND AND REASON OF 

PUNISHMENT. 

"Wisdom crieth. without; she uttereth her voice in the streets; 
she crieth in the chief place of concourse, in the openings of 
the gates : in the city she uttereth her words, saying, How long, 
ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity, and the scorners delight 
in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge ? Turn you at my 
reproof ; behold I will pour out my spirit upon you. I will 
make known my words unto you. Because I have called, and ye 
refused ; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; 
but ye have set at naught all my counsel, and would none of 
my reproof. I also will laugh at your calamity ; I will mock 
"when your fear cometh. "When your fear cometh as desolation, 
and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind ; when distress 
and anguish cometh upon you ; then shall they call upon me, 
but I will not answer ; they shall seek me early, but they shall 
not find me: for that they hated knowledge, and did not 
choose the fear of the Lord : they would none of my counsel ; 
they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the 
fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. 
For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the 
prosperity of fools shall destroy them.'' — Prov. i, 20 — 32. 

Man, without whom and whose relations the Gospel 
would be unmeaning, in whatever point of view we 
contemplate him, is the most singularly constituted, as 
well as strangely and unaccountably endowed, being 
ever presented to the gaze of our astonishment. His 
relations to the past, his connection with the future, his 
coexistence and community with general nature, and all 
about him, conspire in rendering the philosophy of his 
being the true focal point of all human study, and his 
destiny the most momentous disclosure within the gift 
of science or Revelation. Whatever, therefore, relates 



142 



DIVINE MERCY KEJECTED, 



to the one or the other, must be matter of direct and 
impressive interest with every one who is not an outcast 
from the feelings of virtue and the enlightened impulses 
of humanity. 

The subject we have chosen for your improvement, 
on the present occasion, is one of fearful and stirring 
interest. In its application, it is strictly universal and 
unconfinable ; and the humblest, as well as the most 
exalted, tenant of this earthly scene, is addressed and 
appealed to. It is, indeed, characteristic of the whole 
system of Divine Revelation, that it announces an 
ever-present, all-comprehending goodness — regarding the 
weak and the small as truly and benignly as the mighty 
and the massive, and proclaiming the watchful, patient 
condescension of Almighty greatness, as alike supplying 
the wants, and bearing the infirmities, of all. And not 
only disclosing the Divine nature as thus illimitable in 
goodness, but as being really and truly, at the same 
time, the Almighty foe of evil— of all sin and moral 
disorder throughout the universe — and ordaining, ac- 
cordingly, a fixed retributive relation, and especial- 
ly in the instance of man, between the future and the 
past. 

In applying these preliminary truths to man, in his 
present dependent and related state, we shall. First, 

NOTICE THE TENDER OF HAPPINESS, MADE IN THE TEXT, TO 

THE VICIOUS AND UNREGENERATE. Man is bom to the 
lofty ambition of an infinite good, and is never satisfied, 
never at rest, until he finds it. Happiness is his being's 
end and aim, and the pursuit of it, unless necessitv 
intervene to prevent, will never be intermitted until he 
meets with something to suit and fill the immortal long- 
ings of the mind. Equally true is it, as we are taught 
both by nature and Revelation, that man is the object, not 



THE GROUICD AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 143 

merely of the Divine regard in general terms, but of 
HeaA^en's tender and special predilection, and that to 
Heaven alone, in every final sense, man should look for 
happiness. Thither, for this purpose and at all times, 
he should feel himself hurried by a rapid and irresist- 
ible movement. 

If all that this world calls good and great, or regards 
as most essential, could make man happy, or give him 
contentment, the author of the text would certainly have 
been the happiest, the most contented of men. The son 
of a king swaying no common scepter, his earlier days 
were passed and associations formed, amid the splendor 
and attractions of a court. Lono^ before the lesson of the 
text was penned, he had been seated in regal affluence 
upon the throne of ancient Israel. All that could de- 
light or charm — all that could amuse or interest — all that 
could thrill the heart with rapture, or elevate the mind 
with the glow of ambition — would seem to have been his. 
He had explored every accessible field of knowledge, 
and every region of science, then known to man. IN'ature 
from her own lips had taught him her lessons, and even 
mysteries. History and study had made him familiar 
with the lore of the past, the wisdom of ages. 

In emulous rivalry, philosophy and poetry sought to 
engage his heart and secure his influence. Authority 
and reputation were his, beyond all ordinary example. 
Wealth and empire were found at his feet, and minister- 
ed to his wishes. The luxuries of the East, from Baby- 
lon to Central Ethiopia, supplied his table and banquet. 
Joy and festivity, with all their appurtenant regalia, reign- 
ed in his palace and the circle of his attendants. Beau- 
ty too, as it bloomed amid his own Judean hills, upon the 
banks of the Nile and in the spice-groves of Sheba, 
brought him the tribute, which naught but beauty could 



144 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



bring ; tlie rose, with mystic significance, entwined with 
the hlj ; and love, with all the enchantment of its 
witchinof blandishments, became the banner of the en- 
vied monarch. Kings, queens, courts and nations, were 
ambitious of his favor— became the heralds of his fame, 
and proved true to the more than regal glory of Solo- 
mon ! 

Without any interruption for a long term of years, 
amid every alternation of external circumstances, the cup 
of enjoyment was brimming before him. Ever and anon, 
he approached and sought the heart's content in quaffing 
draughts deep and long — repeating the experiment again 
and again, and renewing the trial, as often as inclination or 
lang-uor suggested. And yet he pronounced all to be ^'van- 
ity;" and, finally, in the vehemence of disappointed ardor 
of search, humbled by experience and guided by inspi- 
ration, he reduplicates the charge — vanity of vanities — 
vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! " and concludes this 
grand lesson of instruction to man, by directing our at- 
tention to the sublime objects and unwasting treasures of 
revealed Religion, under the personification of Wisdom 
extending the free scepter of generous invitation to every 
human being in pursuit of happiness. 

Of this tender^ assuming the truth of Revelation^ we re- 
mark, First, it is sincere and credible^ with regard to every 
human being. It is made by the God of truth and sin- 
cerity, in the language of truth and soberness. The very 
idea that God would make a faithless, mock tender of 
happiness to his own intellectual offspring, the intelligent 
creatures he has made, is too degrading, too undeifying, 
to obtain in the creed of any one who wishes to love and 
reverence the Creator. 

That God should make such an ofter as this — an ofi'er 
not intended to secure the salvation of man— is not only 



THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 



145 



mlinitelj improbable, but, in view of all we know of him, 
absolutely impossible. It would amount to an impeacli- 
ment and tlie direct dishonor of every one of his perfec- 
tions, especially his holiness, justice, and goodness. It 
would dishonor his holiness, for there would be the ab- 
sence of every thing like truth, and the reality of pui- 
posed deception, in the tender. It would stain his juis- 
tice with dishonor, inasmuch as, upon this hypothesis, 
his word inspires hope, vv^hile every one of his purposes 
is big and burning with vengeance. He invites the sin- 
ner to his embrace and fellovvship, at the same time that 
he is preparing for him the killing throes of eternal an- 
guish, as the issue of his own appointment ! 

If the tender in the text be not sincere, instead of good- 
ness or any thing like it, every act of assumed, apparent 
kindness, is the most refined, unmingled cruelty — the 
cruelty of a being whose want of mercy unfeelingly mocks 
our need of it — for it offers salvation in word, to those 
who, in deed and purpose, are already beyond the reach 
of it. Such views of the character of God, we are ob- 
liged to think, are worse than none, and to suppose them 
true, impossible — except under the perverting influence of 
the most blind and determined error. The sincerity and 
credibility of the tender, therefore, are every way enti- 
tled to the undoubting trust and confidence of those 
addressed. 

We remark further of this tender, that it is earnest and 

mgenily iinpressive. Jehovah is not only sincere, but 

plainly and deeply in earnest. If we doubt or deny this, 

we discredit the promises, the threatnings, the oath and 

the expostulations, of Heaven ; all of which attest the deep 

and adorable solicitude of the God and Father of all, on 

the subject of human salvation. If in all these, Jehovah 

has not been sincere and in earnest, to the letter of his 
7 



146 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



assurances, he lias treated man, so far as we can see, 
disingenuously, and with intention to deceive ; by holding 
up to his expectations a beacon of hope, while the only 
radiance that gilded his path was intended to light him 
to ruin and lead him to hell ! 

If God be not in earnest, why do we read, and in cruel 
mockery hear, of his importunate '^zeal'' — his ten- 
der mercies — the yearnings of his heart " — his de- 
lighting in mercy " — his relentings" kindled — and, in 
the strong language of inspired imagery, the sound- 
ino's of his bowels " ? 

o 

Moreover, aware that man would not credit his word 
under ordinary circumstances of statement and assevera- 
tion, and by strange distortion would teach and preach, 
that he so delighted in the death of man as to consign 
uncreated as well as unborn millions to a perdition of his 
own choosing, he resists the ungrateful, the little less 
than blasphemous, imputation — deliberately swearing 
by the grandeur of the highest and greatest, and the so- 
lemnity of his own eternal throne, that he wills the death I 
of none, but prefers the life, and has provided for the i 
happiness, of all. | 

This tender, accordingly, is universal and irrespective. 
And the same evidence which proves the sincerity and 
solicitude of Heaven in the offer of salvation to one, ^ 
demonstrates the truth and earnestness of God in the i 
offer of salvation to all. If any one is precluded, we d 
affirm, what all must see, that the recognition of such / 
preclusion is not in the Bible. And who, we cer- 2 
tainly may presume to ask, has made the discovery of 
some unrevealed book of fate, or sealed volume of desti- \ 
ny, containing the record ? How, or by whom, has the \ 
truth of God in his Word been made of *'none effect," 
by what is not there ! I 



THE GHOL'Nt) AXD REASON OF PUXTSHMENT. 147 



That God would offer salvation to those ttIio, by ex- 
press and eternal statute, are directly and forever exclud- 
ed his mercy, is an inconsistency, a felt absurdity, that 
can never be reconciled by human or heavenly skill, vrith- 
out annihilating the essential distinctions betvreen truth 
and falsehood and throwing down all the moral barriers 
between Heaven and hell. If God cannot lie," every 
man has an available chance for salvation. If every man 
have not such chance, then the oath of the Creator is 
less veritable than the word of the creature, and the truth 
of his sayings, in every instance, must depend upon the 
superinduction and character of extrinsic proof. 

The dark, gloomy, iron-hearted exclusive in religion, 
claiming a monopoly of Heaven's friendship for himself 
and party, may assault and belabor you with his syllo- 
gisms and demonstrations, to prove an intrinsic, eternal 
disqualification on the part of some, for the favor and 
approval of Heaven ; but, to every dream or code of re- 
probation, not based upon the rejection of the Gospel, as 
a dispensation of mercy, the Bible opposes the most ex- 
plicit denial of its truth, and the oath of God authenti- 
cates the imputation. 

Happiness, therefore, immortal as the soul, and coex- 
tensive with the range of its consciousness, is the offered 
heritage of every child of man ; and the happiness thus 
offered, is preeminently the supreme good of humanity, 
and the true wealth that, before every other, life should 
garner in its prime. 

Tfiis lender, further^ is varied, ivithout arnbigwity in its 
terms. Jesus Christ approaches you, as the great teach- 
er and only Savior, with his light, his Word and his Spirit, 
and all the salient appliances of the gracious Evangelical 
economy under which we live. Heaven essays your con- 
version in the language of unquestioned authority — of 



148 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



moral appeal — of urgent persuasion, and the most fear- 
ful denunciation. Every motive is pressed, every exper- 
iment applied. Heaven has no glories that are not un- 
folded, and hell no fires that are not kindled, to excite 
your hopes and alarm your fears, rouse you to action, 
and induce your surrender. Every redeeming element, 
every recuperative energy of your moral nature, is forci- 
bly addressed and vigilantly appealed to. Naught but 
compulsion is forborne. 

If it be true, as pithily remarked by one of the few 
Christian poets in our language or literature, that 
''Heaven but persuades," while ''almighty man de- 
crees " — that man is indeed " the maker of immortal 
fates " — that he " falls by man, if finally he falls how 
equally and fearfully true is it, that should man fall, the 
provisions of God's counsel and covenant in his behalf, 
shall be inscribed upon the majestic ruin, and that he 
shall sink to the hell he would not shun, with the rain- 
bow of mercy gilding his vision, and the waters of sal- 
vation purling in his ears ! 

This Under is special and elaborate^ in relation to the 
motives and interests appealed to. It is not only full and 
explicit, as it regards the all-pervading goodness of God, 
in view of your happiness, but equally in announcing 
your enchainment beneath his hand, for the purposes of 
punishment, should you reject this provision. The lines 
of this tender or invitation, have not only "gone out in- 
to all the world," destined, like the equatorial, to girt 
the globe — but the most vehement reprehension and de- 
nunciation are appealed to, as equally necessary to ac- 
complish the object had in vievf. And, accordingly, not 
only is the grace of God represented as universal and 
without limit in provision and proposal, but his sever- 
ity challenges our fears, in the language of grave and 



THE GHOUND AND REASON OF PUlsTISHMENT. 149 



startling reproof, the most lofty and God-like upbraid- 
ing 1 

The dispensation under which we live, is rife alike with 
wisdom and warning. Infinite goodness has never slum- 
bered a moment over the vast interest — the all -compre- 
hending design — of bringing the scattered tribes of the 
faith, and sinners of the Gentiles,'' to the arms of mer- 
cy and numbering them with the family of God. But 
although the Gospel of God is thus bright and benign, 
to all who do not reject it ; yet, to those who do, it is the 
herald of wrath in the last, not less than of love in the 
first, instance. We have here a junction of seemingly in- 
congruous elements, goodness and severity, the mercy, 
and the holiness of God. 

jSTor is this strange or at all incredible ; we meet with a 
similar exhibition of counteractive elements and antago- 
nist impulses, throughout the economy of universal be- 
ing, and their presence here need not surprise us. These 
principles lay the deep foundation of the vast superstruc- 
ture of Mature, Providence and Grace. They constitute 
the true power of equilibrium in the intellectual and 
physical universe, and should be looked upon, in fact, 
the one as a productive, and the other as a conservative 
principle. 

But to return. This teyidtr is fearful and momentous^ 
in vieiv of the hazards it involves. Admonitions are upon 
you, uttered by the voice, written by the finger, and 
borne by the messengers, of God. And if that voice can- 
not be the pander of falsehood, that finger and those 
messengers cannot err nor yet deceive, God intends the 
final happiness of all who do not destroy themselves. 

If it be true, that inexorable purpose on the part of 
Deity renders all the actions of our lives necessary and 
unavoidable, and man ex necessitate the victim of inevi' 



160 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



table sequences over whicli lie has no control — then, 
whenever you are called upon to reform, or be what you 
are not, the majesty of Heaven is seen sporting with the 
wretchedness of man. We cast the bare thought from 
us with abhorrence, as one with which we can never 
make friends. 

It was not unkindness or unwillingness in God to save, 
but the sin and rebellion of man, that sunk the depths 
and kindled the flames of the retributive future pictured 
in the text. God has kindly, imploringly proposed to im- 
mortalize his goodness, in the recovery and salvation of 
every one of us. He calls to repentance and prayer, and 
proffers pardon and grace. He proclaims to all an orig- 
inal identity of interest in the Cross of Christ — a joint 
inheritance of Heavenly mercy ; and thus accredited by 
promise, and assured by invitation, he tenders us con- 
fidence in himself, too strong for despair, and hope victo- 
rious over tears and death. 

And yet how few, comparatively, accept this tender ? 
Life's ever-shifting drama proves more attracti v^e. Ex- 
cited and fevered by its vanities and trifles, engrossed by 
other and adverse interests, and continually drugged 
with the irreflection of frivolity and skepticism, the ten- 
der in the text is looked upon as an extra-prudential or 
entirely expletive concern, which may or may not be at- 
tended to, as taste or prepossession may suggest. And 
hence the fearful issues to which the text directs atten- 
tion. 

II. Having glanced at the fact, let us attempt to 

ACCOUNT FOR THE REJECTION OF THIS TENDER. We ai'C, in- 
deed, in veritable sadness, called upon to weep as we con- 
fess that this rejection is but too common and general. 
Millions, everywhere, throng the frequented haunts of 
vice and folly, while Life's neglected path shows, here 



TELE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 



151 



and there, a traveler. If not seen — if not constantly in 
our eye — could it be believed ! 

At the behest of Him whose claims we urge, ''Maz- 
zaroth minds his seasons," and ''Arcturus guides his 
suns " — Xature, in all her vastness, steadily pursues her 
course ; but, when the Maker of man asks but the trib- 
ute of his affections, the homage of his heart, his chil- 
dren — unaccountable fatuity ! — deny him the charity ! 
Such is the cold neoiect, the Heaven-defi^audino- ino-raxi- 
tude of man ; such his ever-asking and yet never-sated 
appetite for crime. Heaven, it would seem, has no bless- 
ings good enough for him — no evil in store of which he 
stands in awe. 

And as a first and frvAtful source of this rejection, we ask 
atteyition tb the idolairom love of things present. With 
hopes, and fears, and aspirings, that relate to the invisible 
and the distant, man madly clings to v\'hat is seen and is 
held only by the tenure of the passing moment. With a 
kind of Epicurean morality, or rather madness, he con- 
stantly betrays his devotion to the good of the present 
hour, and turns from the, to him, dark and ebon hues of 
the remote and eventful future. 

The grander objects of human hope and human intel- 
lect are overlooked, and the pupil of earth's adversities 
is seen, strangely seen, hugging the fleeting nothings of 
an idiot-dream, with the most perilous self-security. 
This world's imposing wares and gilded haberdasheiy; 
are to him of more value, than the imperishable riches 
of ever-during glory ; and that dread Being, who has 
thunders to crush and lightnings to scorch, and all thci 
fearful elements and agencies of death and hell to pun- 
ish his enemies, is less feared than the stupid derision or 
withheld patronage of, it may be, some boon oompamon 
in vice or favorite fool of fortune. 



162 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



One here is the representative of all, and they are 
seen chnging to a sinking world with agonizing grasp, 
until, finally, they sink in death, an abhorring" to all 
intelligence, and loaded with the increased curses of in- 
calculable wretchedness, God, who made us, and will 
judge us ! — what folly ! — how utter the madness ! De- 
luded thousands, self-misunderstood millions, are seen 
scrambling, snatching, and hoarding, in the vast stubble- 
field of this nether world, that on which, as an exclusive 
boon, immortality would starve to death ! 

This world has never been trusted as a source of hap- 
piness, without becoming a bootless cheat. Thus viewed, 
it is, at best, a paradise of brambles and thorns — an Eden 
of briars and thistles. In proof, you need only look at 
the mere man of the world — the thorough, purposed 
devotee of Mammon — isolated upon a solitary fragment 
of the universe, destined to perish, and yet grasping the 
perishable — v/ithout any warrant of help or hope from 
God — with no Bible but his ledger — no religion, save the 
philosophy of profit and loss — knowing no creed or code 
in morals, except to think of what he likes, and then try- 
ing to like vv^hat he thinks ! 

Another cause of this rejection^ icill he found iii dissipa- 
tion of thought^ as leading to a vicious life. The worldly- 
minded million, the mass of our kind, seldom think of 
God and the moral relations of their nature. Heaven 
has epitomized the history of unnumbered millions, du- 
ring a term of sixty centuries, in a single sentence — God 
is not in all their thoughts ! " The studied exclusion of 
serious thought and the seductions of unreflecting levity, 
are but too often successful in precluding the weighty 
and awful images and impressions of death and duty, 
heaven and hell. 

The temper and habit, the vice of inconsideration, we 



THE GROUND AND REASON 



OF PUNISHMENT. 



163 



are now deploring, boasts the ruin of uncounted mil- 
lions, and has so fearfully multiplied its rictims, as to 
make moral goodness and Christian virtue sadly scarce 
on earth. The truth is languidly received, if at all, amid 
the senseless parade and seductive panorama of this 
world's temptations and vanities. Look at the almost im- 
perceptible gradations by which they are beguiled to the 
verge of the precipice ! Look at the children of folly — = 
worshipers in the temple of earth's lying vanities — some, 
busy and bustling, hoarding wealth and accumulating the 
spoils of luxury ; others, grasping with anxious reach at 
the air-blown btibble of fame ; and others again, in the 
bosom of vacancy at home in the day, and at night sally- 
ing forth to the polluted revel or empty pageant, and, 
with a zeal shaming more worthy worshipers, ptishing 
their maddened avidity for dissipation into the blush and 
beams of the returning day I Principle is prostrate, 
virtue in weeds, and vice claims unbridled license in all 
the details of a life without hope and without God. Se- 
rious thought and sober reflection, may occasionally 
enter the mind, and even reach the heart, btit they re- 
main not : they only make a kind of thoroughfare there, 
are entertained transiently, and then dismissed. 

The history of one day — of one week — is the history of 
every day, of every week ; and each is only redeemed by 
offering to God the wretched wanderings of a mind stulti- 
fied and debased by the never-ending worship of the 
world — an insane idolatry of the gross, the palpable, and 
the sensual. The inevitable result of this state of things, 
is to darken and debilitate the understanding, not less 
than to dull and obttmd all moral feeling. It renders you, 
at once, not only feeble and abortive in intellect, but low 
and odious in propensity, and, of course, hateftil in char- 
acter. IN'or is there any end to the evil. Its tendency 



164 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



is to accumulation. It is a salt-stream, every draught from 
which but augments your thirst for more. And, ac- 
cordingly, of all the paths that lead to hell, those of dis- 
sipation are, perhaps, the most thronged and beaten, al- 
though none more certainly will guide you thither. 

Would we could so present the subject, as to have it 
felt, as well as understood — felt, as some one says, not 
only ''in the blood,'' as in the ordinary excitements of 
passion, but *' along the heart," and amid the depths of 
its profounder emotions. What is life thus spent, but a 
huge, senseless vanity-fair, while a kind of conventional 
insanity, morbidly avid of pleasure and excitement, be- 
comes the reigning divinity of the scene. 

And yet we should insult these children of dissipation, 
did we fail, forsooth, to defer to the occasional exhib- 
ition of their religious opinions and feelings ! Some 
vague general impressions, the result of accident or 
circumstances, and at best a mere parenthesis in the 
current of thought and feeling, are quoted and obtruded 
upon our notice, with the utmost assurance and com- 
placency — although the practical effect might only 
remind one of a stray sunbeam finding its way into a 
cave of bats, and there working transformations you can 
readily imagine without any help from us ! Such intel- 
lectual trifling, and playing the amateur, if not the 
fool, with the high moral interests of our nature, may 
do to quiet fear and repress apprehension in the children 
of ungodliness, but cannot possibly avail them in the 
hour of extremity or the day of final trial. If you 
would dissolve the death-spell of their self-security, 
and throw them upon the Cross of Christ for the hope 
of recovery — the trut-h of God and the appeals of the 
Gospel pressed upon them, must reach and strike them 
so as to break every bone in the soul ! 



THE GBOUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 166 



The next cause ice 7iotice^ is pride of under standing , Hu- 
mility and self-denial are essential to Christian character. 
They are of the essence of religion in every subjective 
sense. The Gospel publishes, with a thousand organs, that 
the great edifice of Christian salvation can only be reared 
upon the wreck of our crucified nature. But the 
haughty intellect, the pigmy understanding, the dwarf- 
ish conception, of this world's philosopher, flatterer, or 
fondling, each proudly erects itself into a barrier 
against all the claims of Heaven, and, reckless of his 
immortal doom, glides on his way to death and hell, as 
if made for no other purpose and destined to spend 
eternity amid its outcasts. 

The humility at which we have glanced, is a proper 
estimate of ourselves, and the transfer of our regards 
from the objects of self-love to the supreme excellence 
centering and terminating in things eternal, especially 
the high moral relations existing between God and man, 
and the eventful issues they desiderate. In true hu- 
mility there is nothing inconsistent with the high-minded 
worth and dignified bearing so generally regarded as 
elements of human greatness. It comports and falls in 
with all the nobler and aspiring attributes of our intel- 
lectual and moral nature. It is the o-reat reo-ulator — the 
grand principle of equilibrium among them all. It is 
the mystic zone, binding in union the whole constella- 
tion of the graces and virtues. So far from rejecting, it 
improves upon all the more common and attractive virtues 
of good character : the prudence of Ulysses — the mod- 
eration of Scipio — the firmness of Palemon — the wisdom 
of Socrates. It gathers a halo of chastened, abiding- 
glory around the courage of Paul, the energy of Peter, 
and the charity of John. 

Pride of understanding, as now distinctively viewed, 



156 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



is the opposite of humility, and has given rise to a very 
large proportion, at least, of all the controversy, quar- 
rel, and litigation, by which the world has been divided 
into innumerable belligerent antagonist sections and 
factions. It has been, paradoxical as it may appear, the 
great patron of ignorance — the legitimate source of 
nearly all the debasing systems and inventions of quack- 
ery and impiricism, in whatever department of inq^ iry 
or pretension. And, as an elementary principle of 
crime, it has contributed, without limit, to the preva- 
lence of infidelity and irreligion. The understanding is 
the great presiding attribute of our nature, and when, 
by any fatal misdirection, it refuses deference and sub- 
mission to the will and laws of Heaven, the inevitable 
result is a vicious life. In the balance of the under- 
standing thus perverted, all is wrong, or without inter- 
est, except self. The evil extends itself inimitably, 
seating vice, in a thousand forms, upon altars and 
thrones, and, through the long vista of ages, offering it 
the incense of deluded nations. 

Another cause^ is indifference of feeling — insensibility. 
The rejectors of this tender, refuse, or fail to see, 
through any other medium, or by means of any other 
optics, than those of passion and interest. The gulf is 
before them, but self-delusion covers the approach to it 
with the deceptive hues and inviting aspect of hope 
and fancy. They sit down in security and rise up .to 
play. They repeat the process and experiment as occa- 
sion may offer or inclination suggest. This is, indeed, a 
fearfal venture — a most dangerous hazard. It is the 
deceitful security of a calm on the bosom of ocean, 
while the insensible progress of the current draws the 
vessel to the gulf and gives it to the eddying deep ! 

Indifference of feeling, with regard to our moral re- 



THE GROUND AXD REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 157 



lations, follows pride of understanding — want of humil- 
ity — in necessary sequence. Eeject the truth and you 
wil] become indifferent to it. Religion will address and 
assault you in vain. The Bible opens its treasures and 
throws down at your feet the hopes and hazards of 
eternity, but it is without effect. The man of indiffer- 
ence, in relation to his eternal interests, courts the 
influence and clings to the demon of insensibility as his 
only resource — the paiardian ano^el of his beino;-. His 
heart is a pathless, irreclaimable desert, where God and 
good are forgotten and forbidden. What at first was 
partial, becomes, in time, a total atrophy of feeling, and 
ends in the heart's utter callousness and moral ossifica- 
tion. 

This indifference, if not arrested, will imperceptibly 
terminate in utter obduracy, and blight, with final curse, 
the whole summer of the soul ; and a lethargy that thus 
beo^an in indifference will end in death. Xo means will 
avail to save you. Even the light of truth and Heaven, 
will fall powerless upon the cold dial of the heart. The 
rejection of Heaven becomes the choice of hell ; and, 
you will find, that, as your life has been a lie, so your 
death will be a cheat even to yourselves. Such is the 
foredoomed conclusion of your career as the children 
of vice. Whether storm or calm attend your course, 
shipwreck finally will be sure to end it. 

Lnpatience of moral restraint, is araong the impulsions 
to evil, and leads to the rejection of ichich we are speaking. 
If we except the strictly virtuous and self-denying, how 
impatient are the children of men of moral restraint of 
whatever kind. Rarely and reluctantly are they found 
treading the rigorous path of repentance and amend- 
ment, in a timely and hopeful return to God. They 
revolt from truth and duty as too restrictive of human 



158 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



passion. The idea of an inexorable devotion of them- 
selves to God and religion, amid the dissipations and 
distractions of life, proves utterly revolting to their 
peering and ambitious passions and projects. The pres- 
ent must be agreeable and saturnian, be the future 
never so fatal and disastrous. Life must be whiled 
away in reveling and mirth, although eternity be told 
in sighs and spent in groans. They resolve to move in 
a circle of gay and reckless companionship here, al- 
though hereafter they should be reduced to exclusive 
intercourse with the devil and his angels. 

JSTow they reject the Gospel and vilely palter with 
truth and duty — not recollecting, it may be, that they 
are doomed to give everlasting evidence of their impor- 
tance hereafter. Now they idly saunter upon the brink 
of the abyss, and gaze, with mingled emotions of curi- 
osity and indifference, upon its rippled and varied 
surface, gay and grateful with sunbeam and shadow ; 
but what know they of the movements of the deep, or 
what assures them that the tempest and thunder of 
its rage will have a distant aim instead of reaching 
them ! 

Deter7ni?ied impiety should also^ "perhaps^ he more dis- 
tinctly noticed. The height, the summit, of impiety, is 
not reached at once. The first essays of vice and folly 
are timid and misgiving. Gradually, however, they ac- 
quire a steadier step and firmer nerve. As sin ad- 
vances, hesitation is overcome, and its movements and 
excesses increase in boldness, until it finally denies to 
Heaven the right of obedience, and claims prerogative 
to act at will. It is practically assumed, that ''he who 
made the eye doth not see — he who formed the ear 
doth not hear.'' Gratification asks for the rein and 
indulgence slackens it. 



THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 159 



All restraint is set at nauglit, and a fiendish bravery 
is acquired in the commission of crime of every hue and 
size. Some of its myriad forms bear the signature of 
custom and fashion — others are without name or recital. 
Some have the countenance of a world estranged from 
God, and others no place even in the calendar of fiends. 
It is not, however, any part of our purpose to attend, in 
detail, either to the history or anatomy of crime — what 
we propose, is to fix attention upon the fact, that, among 
the myriad multitudinous sins and obliquities of our 
nature, but one excludes from the hope of reconciliation 
with Heaven, and this is, the rejection of the tender in 
the text. And where this charge attaches, all will be 
found involved in the condemnation it announces ; and, 
although darkly and unnoticed, their doom, not less cer- 
tainly, is steadily nearing in the distance 1 

Avowed indifference^ o/tid infidelity in principle and 
practice. This is the final step in crime — the last term 
of moral debasement. The infidel outcast avows his 
right to live as he pleases, and refuses, boldly refuses, 
any longer to discount his life and character with 
Heaven. He glories in unbounded latitude to sin, and 
dissolves, at once, all connection with a virtuous uni- 
verse. His principles, if we would account for them in 
the light of Revelation, derive their currency from 
hell. His practices, viewed in the same light, bear its 
image, and thither his God-forsaken feet are rapidly 
tending ! 

At the feet, and before the face of his Maker, he has 
thrown the gantlet and waves the standard of defiance. 
Swayed by the counsel of the ungodly, he is fast hasten- 
ing to the bosom of a bourn from whence there has 
been but one courier — the ''smoke of the torment'' of 
those who were left behind ! 



160 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED 



These truths may be despised and rejected now, but 
the last hours of the vicious and impenitent will avenge 
them as more important than all beside. Beset and 
periled in the very center of the dark Serbonnian bog 
of unbelief, they will find, too late, that no causeway 
has been thrown across it ! Encompassed by gloom and 
dismay, as by an atmosphere — the curse of one part of 
their kind, and the scorn of the rest — girt with a hasten- 
ing and terrible doom — reckless, joyless, aimless — the 
shadows of doubt and danger rolling up to Heaven like 
the dark mists of morning — bound by fate to the rock 
and vulture of the past — despair becomes the only pulse 
that throbs them on to death and hell ! 

The language of the text, typing the general and uni- 
form language of the Bible, will account for the plain- 
ness and point of the appeal we urge. We wish to be 
judged by conscience not passion. Let the truth of 
God, as found in his Word, be the umpire between us. 
We may not decline the faithful performance of duty. 
We would, by a fearless and yet appropriate use of the 
knife, search and probe the body of sin — dragon-headed, 
huge, and horned as it may be — to the very bone. We 
would present it to you naked, quivering, disjointed and 
expiring ! It is this monster, sin, and sin only, that has 
peopled earth with fiends and hell with men. To sin, 
then, we ask you to swear immitigable — more than Car- 
thagenian — hate. No part of the task before us can be 
omitted or compromised. We should not only pierce 
the labyrinth but slay the monster, and, with his car- 
cass, bury the slime and leprosy of ages ! Such is the 
business — the duty of the Pulpit. 

III. The punishment incurred. The laws of the uni- 
verse are not more certain in their operation, than the 
punishment of sin. The same goodness that determines 



THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 161 



the rewards of virtue, ordains the retribution and shall 
necessitate the doom of vice. God Vv'ould treat his 
universe as ill, were he not to punish sin, as he would 
were he not to reward piety — and much more so, for 
the one would be a positive and the other but a neg- 
ative evil. The one would license disorder while the 
other Vv^ould be merely to withhold the recompense of 
virtue. 

So sure, therefore, as God is good, is just, is truCj 
exists even, sin must be punished. It is necessary to the 
stability and welfare of the Divine administration. Sin, 
in this fallen world of ours, is alike the parent of misery 
and the harbinger of ruin. It strikes its deadly poison 
at the root of all that is gay, and green, and pure, in 
human nature. It is the sure prolific principle of pro- 
duction in every scene of anguish and suffering. But 
the most appalling, the miost unheavenly and fearful of 
all its consequences, is, it never fails to gravitate to hell, 
in the instance of tbe finally obdtirate sinner: and of all 
the millions of its victims, not one has ever escaped — all, 
all, have sunk alike, and without hope, beneath the burden 
of its curse. 

Cofinccted ivilh the punishment in qvestion, ice notice, first^ 
the curse of o.b and on meat. This may, and no dotibt often 
does, take place, long before the convictions and feelings 
of despair exclude every ray of light, and the last linger- 
ing beams of hope and heaven shall confound their des- 
tiny with that of the finally lost. 

Thev now, when thus oiven over to hardness of heart 
and reprobation of mind," even to the extent of ''believ- 
ing a lie that they mJght be damned" — they now become 
the children of perdition, and are hastening to the death 
and the darkness they madly braved during a life of 
crime. "Wlien God has tried the variotis experiments of 
7* 



162 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



his mercy in vain, then the time for his justice to strike 
approaches. If he cannot magnify the freedom of his 
own choice in the salvation of the impenitent, he will 
illustrate the severer attributes of his nature in the doom 
rendered inevitable by its rejection. There is a point 
beyond which Heaven will not be provoked, and further 
^forbearance would be unjust. 

Given over." Fearful language — dreadful determ- 
ination ! God grant that, in our case, it may never be 
uttered or purposed 1 Would such language be em- 
ployed — could it be, if men were from everlasting the 
reprobate offspring of God who made them ? Fated to 
perdition before they were created, and therefore created 
for the purpose ? Can it be believed, that the illumina- 
tions of heavenly light, gilding the scene of our earthly 
being, are given to men only as flash the flames of retri- 
bution upon the damned, to tell of naught but woe and 
doom and utter undoing ! 

The only reason Heaven assigns for the reprobation 
of any of our race, is their failure to believe the truth " 
and because they ''had pleasure in unrighteousness." 
Man may assign a different reason ; but, in the belief of 
every one, ''let God be true," and, by how far it is 
necessary to this result, " every man a liar." 

Inquittude and insecurity of feeling. The rising appre- 
hension of a terrible futurity will arrest and appall the 
most indiff'erent. The prophetic visions of despair will 
chill them with their gloom. The angry tempest will 
loAver, and the ghosts of murdered time and abused mer- 
cies flit before them. The spectral forebodings of the 
neglected future will disturb and invade their quiet. 
The remains of truth in the mind v/ill vex, and the indig- 
nant murmurs of conscience harrass them. A stinging 
sense of insulted duty and neglected good, will corrode 



THE GROUND A^D REASON? OF PUNISHMENT. 



163 



and infuse the bitter foretastes of a long repentance be- 
yond the grave ! 

What mean those indistinct and shadowy fears- — that 
vague terror — that cold and creeping dread ! Why that 
grapple with an unknown shade, as though touched by 
an unearthly wing? What mean those muttered curses 
to the troubled winds, as if not intended for the ear of 
Heaven or earth ! Why such unwonted effort to offer 
up the now troubled moments of existence upon the altars 
of eternity ? Agony, the most acute, renders life a 
burden and its vicissitudes a curse. When virtue and 
hope are striken out from the solaces of existence, and 
time is rapidly working his bitter commission in relation 
to their uncompleted doom, it is only left them to look 
forward to the future with its deep -hoarded and gather- 
in o- woe ! 

Preliminary visitations of God] s displeasure, God hav- 
ing resolved to abandon to remorse and punishment the 
finally impenitent, although redeemed by the blood of 
his Son, preintimates this design, with fearful certainty^ 
in the afflictions and compunctions of our guilty and de- 
graded nature prior to death. Heaven and earth con- 
spire to avenge the quarrel of his covenant and the insults 
offered to his wisdom and goodness. 

Every hour and every element teems with troops of ' 
vengeance to punish and destroy. An elemental war, 
fatal to internal repose, is found within. Conscience and 
inclination are in mutiny. Passion is in a state of insur- 
rection against principle, and even sleep becomes a hell 
of angry dreams, w^hile the most fearful dismay and 
desolation of feeling tell them the worst has not arrived. 
Even the termless future, meting out its unresting ages 
of agony and shame, will only accord them what despair 
is allowed to inherit from the murdered hopes of the 



164 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



past 1 They may turn to infinitude — may interrogate 
destiny — may appeal to the changes and chances of the 
one and the other — and yet all will be vain, and nnpro- 
phetic of alight save the burden of the doom we are called 
to depict. 

JJiitimely rei^ort lo the mercy of God^ and nnavaiUng 
effort to conciliate his favor. The tender of his mercy 
has been rejected, and the period of its exercise is past. 
The only medium of its conveyance has been foreclosed 
forever. Repentance now, in all its bitterness, can only 
teach the lesson that once it might have availed, but now 
cannot. God owes it to the unfallen and recovered por- 
tions of his intelligent creation, not less than to himself, 
that the rejectors of his mercy should be punished ; and 
y>^e are, accordingly, assured that destruction, as the 
wing of the whirlwind, swift and irresistible, is destined 
to overtake and involve them in ruin and overthrow 
commensurate with the hopes and interests they have 
thrown away. 

ISTot that Heaven delights in the death and suffering 
implied. No such thought can be indulged for a m_o- 
ment. The whole doctrine of the text, of the entire 
Bible, puts it aside and spurns it as absurd and blas- 
phemous. Is God said to ''laugh at their calamity and 
mock when their fear cometh let metaphor yield to 
analogy, and all will be plain. The scenes of judgment 
and the revelations of the future, will explain all. Look 
at the thunderbolt bickering in mid-heaven. Look at 
avenging lightning leaping from the angry depths of 
storm, and see the only ''laughter/' the only "mock- 
ery," with which Heaven will regard the impotence of 
crin e ! 

Then, indeed, they will seek him early, and in earnest. 
Tlien they will cry and call upon him; but, alas 1 it will 



THE GROUND AND KEASON OF PUNISHMENT. 165 



be of no avail — it will only be, to hear tlie winds of hell 
take up the wail and bear it off to echo ! Then they 
shall estimate their guilt by the price paid for its pardon, 
and fearfully shall their last moments avenge its rejec- 
tion ! Denied all earthly succor and bereft of heavenly 
sympathy, disavowed by nature and abhorred of God, 
which way will they turn for support, or, turning, find 
the object of their search ? 

Every thought, every emotion, having reference to the 
past or the future, like a ghost shrouded in its own form- 
less horror, will be felt a vital weio^ht struo-odino^ at the 
heart and crtishing hope. Time itself will be but the 
viewless path of avenging justice, wafting on the fearful 
retribution. Even now, despite the busy engrossments 
of life, despair begins to pall their horizon on every side, 
like the rising tempest overbrowing a troubled sea. 
Would to Heaven we could make you feel these truths — 
that, with the energy of a billow, the force of an electric 
flash, we could plant conviction of them in a thousand 
hearts at once I 

The calamity of the finally viczms and unregenerate 
consummated, in their hopeless SJibjectio/i tu the purdskmnat 
threatened, Xow they reap the harvest of crime and 
gather the vintage of their folly. The award of judg- 
ment shall assign them a residence in hell, as the place 
of final evil. Hell, in the Scriptures, if we consult their 
analogy, combining plain statement and high wrought 
imagery, is represented as a given portion of the uni- 
verse, occupied as its vast prison-house, for the perpetual 
confinement of inctirably obdtirate criminals in the king- 
dom and government of Jehovah. This fearful avrard is 
final. It is decisive of the fate of the condemned. It is 
conclusive of their destiny, and precludes alike all hope 
of review or reversal. 



166 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



Of this award and the fearful circumstances of grandeur 
and terror under vfhicli it is made, we know not how to 
speak. Thought is inadequate— language powerless. The 
dread, appalling magnificence of the scene — the unap- 
pealable Judge — the multitudes, many and vast, spread- 
ing in boundless view — the dreadful sentence, compared 
with which the thunder-burst rocking immensity wou.ld 
be the music of a dream ! 

Its issues. The fate of a thousand battle-fields fouofht 
and lost, the banner of pestilence shedding plagues and 
curses on pallid millions, the wrath and ruin of an 
enraged equinox upon its howl and revel over earth and 
sea, leaving only wreck and desert in its track — ivhat are 
these, compared with the death-pang felt forever without 
the power to die ! Now, all that was contingent in the 
grand economy of trial and compensation, becomes immu- 
table and determinate. ]^o hope survives. It is the last 
and most fearful mantling of desolation. | 

Then the lost millions who refused the call of God and j 
goodness, will gaze without hope upon the pall of a past ■ 
world and meet the issues and events embryoed by the i 
line of action and the color of their conduct there. Then 
there will be a grand classification of moral elements — 
an unerring exhibition of the laws of character — by which 
the opposing multitudes, separated forever, become anti- 
podes in doom and character — the tenants, 'respectively, 
of heaven and hell, by the intervention of a necessity 
more invincible than the diameter of a sphere ! 

The duration of their calamity is without term or close — 
it is eternal. Jesus Christ says of such, it would have 
been better for them never to have been born " — never 
to have been. By which he plainly teaches, that they 
shall live, and yet be lost forever, and that the evils of 
existence will infinitely over-balance all the good they 



THE GROUND AXD REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 167 



ever enjoyed. Ages spent in hell, numberless as all Ara- 
bia's sands, would render existence a covetable blessino-, 
an infinite good, if such centuries of suffering were to be 
succeeded by an eternity of joy. But all we knoAy as- 
sures us, hell has no outlet, except for the smoke of her 
torment," and the vision of the damned— as in the case 
of Dives, fixed upon the impassible gulf, and the good 
they have lost beyond it ! 

The period for virtue and amendment is past. jSTo good 
is in reserve for them. And being thus unalterably vi- 
cious, they are of necessity interminably wretched, and 
their punishment at once hopeless and eternal. Words 
may not paint this fearful, this most transhum.an of all 
the changes mind can undergo ! Of all the undone with- 
in the range of God's omniscience, the exiled alike from 
human and heavenly sympathy by the fault of their 
own perverse determination, are the most undone. I 
would, and ye would not" — Why will ye die ? " What 
a vision ! Moving the pitying Heavens to expostulation — 
bowing the thrones of hell with remorse and apprehen- 
sion, and leaving only man unmoved ! 

A siyigle additional glance at the 'peculiar misery of the 
finolly impenitent^ and some of the specific causes and cir- 
cumstances of its aggravation, and ice have done. We 
need not repeat, how utterly language and imagination 
fail us. Who can chart the depths of hell, or map the 
dungeons of the damned ! Look at the self-reproach of 
the miserable, and listen to the groans of the lost — their 
deep-struck compunction, and the self-accusations of 
guilt ! Crimes that were once their delight, now become 
the objects of a loathing, that no length of time or hope 
of pardon can remove. 

The guilt and shame of self-reprobation, compounded 
with the misery they imply, are now stamped upon their 



168 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED, 



fate in indelible characters, with no after-scene to vary 
the result. He who chose to be an habitual sinner along 
the whole line of his being, like but too many now before 
us, shall be an eternal sufferer. They chose cursing, and 
now they shall have it in all its dreadful repletion. It 
shall come into their habitations, in all the darkness and 
majesty of crowding waters. The scourge of the doom 
they set at naught, shall break them ''breach upon 
breach," and lengthening duration only sink a deeper 
gulf and kindle a hotter flame. 

Heaven has told you in language which, befitting its 
own lips, cannot fail to become ours, that hell is a place 
*'deep and wide " — a ''pit" of fearful enlargement — 
"bottomless," and "burning" with its quenchless "fire " 
and deathless "worm ;" has told you of "blackness of 
darkness " — " weeping, wailing " — recrimination — 
" cursing and blasphemy " — a " lake " livid, heaving and 
glowing with "fire" and tempest, while the "breath of 
God," like a tide of " burning " sulphur, shall kindle and 
fuel the flame. All, according to the inspired picture, is 
living ruin, breathing torture, undying anguish. 

Such are the wages of sin ; such the end of sinners. 
Dreadful, indeed, must be the condition of each wailing 
culprit in this region of suff'ering ; but infinitely more 
wretched, and unutterably worse, must be the condition 
of those victims of " many stripes," who wickedly and 
inveterately persevered in their rejection of the Christian 
religion, and, amid the beacons and warnings of her tem- 
ples and trophies, and the multitude of her triumphs and 
achievements, took their random and unprotected way to 
hell, and must now waste the ever-lingering moments of 
immortal duration, in the bitterness of recollection and. 
the agony of anticipation ! 

Upon the far-off" temple of the living God, whose glory 



THE GROUND AND REASON OF PUNISHMENT. 169 



and effulgence tliey T^ere invited to share, and in which, 
as shown by special provision and invitation, they might 
one and all have lived, thev mav cast manv a lono- and 
lingering look, but soon again their fated vision is fixed 
upon the images of self-destruction and the surrounding 
objects of despair, while to the blasted gaze of these hope- 
less and disquieted millions, wrecked in all the noble and 
lofty interests of an imperishable being, shall be exposed 
upon the pillars of eternity, traced by an immortal hand, 
the end of sinners " and the epitaph of crime — they 
were slain by the turning away of the simple, and the 
prosperity of fools destroyed them ! at every sight of 
which, the weeping damned, crushed with the burden of 
a fresh despair, return in groans the melancholy truth — 
slain hy the turning away of the simple, destroyed by the 
prosperity of fools! 

Would to God that truth and duty would allow us to 
reverse the picture ! Would to God his unchanging pur- 
poses were not interposed in bar to such reversal ! Would 
he had given warrant, to tell you of seme date in eterni- 
ty's coming years destined to close the night and con- 
clude the darkness of this fearful vision ! But the fu- 
ture glooms before, and the past returns in all the fullness 
of reo-ret. Xo mornino^ breaks — ^no star twinkles — no me- 

o o 

teor gleams ; nor does there rise, throughout the vast 
unfathomed gloom, the feeblest prescience of a brighten- 
ing goal ! 

Once more, we throw down the fearful alternative of 
Heaven or hell at your feet, and ask for your decision ! 
Will you choose life, and thus, even here, let faith's dis- 
cerning eye drink in the vision of your names, sparkling, 
in characters of living sapphire, upon the immortal colimms 
of the Heavenly Jerusalem ! 

Or, is death your choice ? If it be, it only remains, that 
8 



170 



DIVINE MERCY REJECTED. 



we close our appeal, by pointing you to a doom, at sight 
of which immortality itself turns pale ! Look, for here 
we cannot pause — look at perdition's dark and billowy 
sea, spread out in angry, unresting turbulence ! Throw 
your eye athwart the lurid, burning vast— marshal your 
spirit's daring, and meet the doom you so madly chal- 
lenged ! Sneer now at the Heaven you will never enter, 
and call to the victim of each loaded wave, to tell you 
the value of your boasted choice ! Here and now, how- 
ever, there is nothing to debate or question. Which way 
you turn your eye, through all the rolling vast, instead of 
hope and succor, wailing millions, and yourselves among 
them, are, on every side, thrown up and broken^ a living 
ID reck, upon the burning strand of hell ! God grant you 
repentance unto life ! God grant you may baptize your- 
selves from the past, and that the rock to which you cling, 
may be the Rock of Ages ! 



GRANDEUB AKD HUMILIATION OF JESUS CHRIST. 171 



SERMON VI. 

GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION OF JESUS CHRIST. 

" Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was 
rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his 
poverty might be rich/^ — 2 Cor. viii, 9. 

The great substantive basis of all Christian effort, in 
view of the welfare of otbers, and the moral fortunes of 
the world, must be sought in the eventful mission of the 
Son of God, and the drama of its attendant revelations ; 
and facts and details, connected with such effort, can 
only be regarded as the necessary exponents and creden- 
tials of the principles and interests involved in the great 
aboriginal mission of Messiah ; apart from which, the 
world is without hope or symbol of recovery. The sub- 
ject is interesting beyond all others, and would to God 
we could approach it, with mind and heart imbued and 
saturate with its reasons and motives ! And yet, were 
it so, mortality might be borne down beneath the weight 
of its own aspirings ! 

The language of the text essays to express, what no 
expression can adequately reach : the stupendous, the 
unutterable condescension of the Son of God, in becoming 
poor for us — in his incarnation, sufferings and death, for 
the recovery of man. The event we are about to cele- 
brate in our devotions, comprehending its nature and 
issues, constitutes what is indeed the mystery of myste- 
ries ; it is the most peculiar, the crowning dispensation 
of Heaven's surpassing kindness to man ; and presents 
us, in x^s meaning and application, with a length and a 
breadth, a height and a depth, utterly beyond the grasp 
of created conception, and in the depiction of which. 



172 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



thought and language are alike impotent and unavail- 
ing. 

Do you ask, then, why we presume to approach— to 
dissert upon such a theme ? The answer is, for reasons 
infinitely urgent ; we do it, because of what we are and 
what we would be. Feeble and sinful as we know our- 
selves to be, in our present low-thoughted and twilight 
sphere, the text brings before us a subject — a system of 
illumination and recovery — in view of which, we may 
embark our hopes and freight our aims, and feel in the 
confidence of truth and nature, that all is not a dream — 
feel, as the heart alone can feel, that if nothing else be 
true. Heaven, at least, will be found to be. 

Originally involved in one common danger, all are here 
pointed to the same grand deliverance. It is a system 
addressed alike to the wants andregretsof time and the im- 
mortal ends and aims of the future ; raisinof and directino^ 
us from what we are and have been, to the only message 
of hope and means of mercy. 

We have said the event we are about to consider, is 
peculiar and striking ; and, relying upon Divine aid, we 
proceed to explain our meaning. In every aspect, origi- 
nally, the subject is unique in kind, and new and extra- 
ordinary in development. That the Creator of unnum- 
bered, of all worlds, should, by the improbable means of 
poverty and suffering, become the Redeemer of one, and 
that ours ; that he who held unlimited empire from ever- 
lasting — an empire, amid the splendor of whose interests 
and issues the part of it we inhabit, with all its grand 
and lofty dimensions, is shaded in the most humbling in- 
significance ; that He should become the friend and pa- 
tron of man— of an alien family — an outcast "race — a 
fallen planet, with its lapsed intelligences ; and that, too, 
under the most inauspicious and uninviting circumstances, 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



173 



is an event that may indeed excite the wonder and awe 
of Heaven and earth — is one of those veritable myste- 
ries of the Christian religion, beyond the comprehension 
of created intelligence in this state of things, and that 
we shall never fully imderstand, until we become ac- 
quainted with the provisions and arrangements, the 
themes and the contemplations, of eternity. 

In CONSIDERINa THIS SUBJECT FURTHER, WE SHALL, FiRST, 
ASK YOUR ATTENTION TO THE ORIGINAL AND UNDERIVED 

GLORY OF Jesus Christ, assumed in the text. But, on a 
subject of such unearthly abstraction as to preclude fa- 
miliarity of thought, how is it possible to render language 
appropriate ? By the glory of Jesus Christ, we under- 
stand his nature and perfections, the essential grandeur of 
the one, and reflected splendor of the other. By his orig- 
inal and underived glory we mean, that his nature and 
perfections are without origination and without limit. 
There never was a time, in all the dateless calendar of 
the past, when the one did not exist and when he did 
not possess the other. His glory, thus considered, knows 
neither commencement, limitation, nor conclusion. It is 
one perfect, unbounded, eternal mystery of being. 

If we do not, cannot comprehend these things, in the phi- 
losophy of their relations and data — the abyssmal depths 
of their nature and bearings — it is not because they are 
not directly stated and clearly revealed in the Scriptures. 
If the Bible be God's book, and Heaven has been true to 
man, in its numerous and explicit communications affect- 
ing the personal dignity of the Son of God, this plainly 
declared but not wholly conceived mystery — this incom- 
prehensible fact, this unsearchable problem in the science 
of being — must be believed, must be credited. 

The glory of Jesus Christ, further, is original, because 
Heaven announces its existence and assumes its display, 

j 



174 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



ere time commenced his flow, before the world began. 
From all the preexisting years of eternity he was ''the 
brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image 
9f his person." He has ever been the great, active, 
uncreated agent in all the dispensations of God to men. 
And, accordingly, in the mystery of the incarnation, and 
the great work of man's redemption. Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost, appear, in energy and effect, to be coem- 
bodied in the person of Jesus Christ and to constitute 
the repletion of his humanity. And the same position 
and reasoning will apply to creation. We take, for ex- 
ample, the laws and causes of nature, whose long pro- 
gression leads us back, by regular inductive sequence, to 
the great originating mind of the universe — the first 
Father of effects ; and here, the mighty amplitude of 
these results being expressly and in every variety of 
language ascribed to Jesus Christ — here, we pause, 
amid a scene of unequalled grandeur and astonishment, 
to contemplate the original and underived glory of the Son 
of God, as the Supreme Ordainer — the Almighty Wielder 
of the whole — first creating and then fixing the laws 
and issuing edicts for the order and conservation of the 
universe. 

Of the author of our redemption, it is afiirmed in the 
text, that he was rich. He was rich in himself ; and rich, 
also, in relation to the work of his hands, in whatever part 
of his universal dominion. And first^ he was rich in Him- 
self, To understand this adequately and comprehen- 
sively, unless our own views have strangely misled us, 
you must contemplate him, in conformity with the lan- 
guage and analogy of Revelation, as possessing all the 
perfections of Deity, in their entire plenitude and the 
utterness of their immensity. 

His claims as Creator accredit this deduction beyond 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



176 



cavil. As Creator, he is, he must be, an Infinite Spirit, 

possessing original, simple and unextended being; and 
his existence, as such, can bear no affinity to time or space. 
His duration must be one and indivisible ; and space, at 
best, however unbounded, is but the symbol of his all- 
encircling omnipresence. Thus conceived of, creation, in 
al its unmeasured amplitude, is, nevertheless, limited, 
and floats within the range of his immensity. He exists 
wholly in every place and yet not exclusively in any. 
Absolute infinity, in all its illimitable depths and ex- 
pansions, presents nothing foreign to him. He is at 
home, perfectly at home, not only in every actual scene 
of being, but where the projecting compass of design has 
yet to circumscribe the paths of new created worlds, 
and where the strong-pinioned seraph, moving rapid as 
the light, can never, never reach ! Eternity is but the 
term of his being. Omnipotence the strength of his will. 
Ubiquity simple coextension with his essence. Omnis- 
cience the mere comprehension of his ken. And immu- 
tability, but his etern,al consistency with himself. And, 
hence, he is said to be rich. Rich in all the infinitude 
and permanence of unoriginated, boundless being. Rich 
in everything distinctive of Deity. In all the illimitable 
possibilities of omnipotence. The almighty vigor — the 
productive and sustaining potentialities of creation, prov- 
idence and nature ! 

But to be more minute. He was rich in all the limit- 
less treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He knew all 
things wherever found and however existing. And all 
things in heaven, earth and hell, and throughout infin- 
itude beside, were in the same moment mapped before 
his eye. And yet, in the nature he assumed for the pur- 
poses of suffering and triumph, he submitted to learn, to 
be imperfect in knowledge and to increase in wisdom. 



176 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



It must not be overlooked, however, that, in all our 
representations of Jesus Christ, we exhibit him, in every 
situation and aspect, as the same immutable, eternal 
person ; and, any apparent want of unity in the titles, 
fortunes and characteristics attaching to him, mu fc be 
accounted for in view of the fact, that, after and conse- 
quent upon his advent, he possessed two distinct natures — 
a mysterious duality of being, in the same, in his own 
original person. 

He ivas rich in power and might. His were the al- 
mighty, unwanted energies of Deity. His power extends 
to all the possible, conceivable results, both of created and 
uncreated nature. Invincible in power, he was supreme 
in authority. Independent in existence, he was self-suffi- 
cient in ability. The universe knew no agency but his, 
and nature, in all its vastness, was but the index of his 
greatness. And yet, in visiting earth, he descended to 
the lot and the labor of weakness and want. 

Be was rich in happiness — essential y unwingied happvncss. 
All its elements and manifestations were found in him. 
'No incertitude of thought disturbed the repose of his 
purposes. No feeling of inquietude ever reached his 
bosom — no emotion of alarm or insecurity — and yet, in the 
hour of his humiliation, he felt too intensely not to com- 
plain, ''my soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.'* 
The weight of the grief he incurred, was alone sufficient 
to extinguish life, and, dying, he exclaimed, in language 
that moved the thrones of Heaven with dismay, ''My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me 1" He had 
rolled the mighty tide of life and rapture to unnumbered 
millions — to the crowded intelligences of all the worlds 
himself had made — and yet he became a man of sorrows, 
and, 0 how deeply acquainted with grief! 

He wa» rich in counsel, aiid flan, and correspo7iding 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



177 



resources. These were so infinite in number, perfection 
and fullness, as to preclude all idea of improvement by 
review or supplement. His will stood the eternal legis- 
lation of the universe. And equally rich was he in 
means and instrumentality to accomplish the ends pro- 
posed to himself. Amid the contingencies which operate 
their functions in the wide universe of consequences, he 
held empire, and, with controlling sovereignty, conducted 
all to the destined conclusions of his will . 

He was rich in the love and affection of those who sur- 
rounded him. The circle of the morning stars and sons 
of God reflected the glory of his name and the splendor 
of his throne, while the elder children of eternity rejoiced 
in his goodness and lifted up his praise ! And yet, he 
exchano^ed the homao^e and confidence of Heaven for the 
ill-nature, distrust and persecution of earth. His incar- 
nation determinately subjected him to this. For, in 
order that he might appear as surety and advocate in 
behalf of man, it was necessary that he should become 
one with man both in nature and law, and, by conse- 
quence, suffering. And, hence, the lights and shadows 
of his history, as Son of man — God of seraphim ! — made 
flesh and dwelling among men, and yet invested 
with regal Headship involving the control of universal 
being ! 

How irresistibly, therefore, does it follow, that, He 
was rich in ability, not only to save the virtuous and good, 
hut to subdue and destroy his enemies. Know, then, that 
with him will and power are the same. We will not 
pause to prove or illustrate how he can make his enemies 
wretched beyond all others. You have only to seek them 
in the impassable circle of their fatal and accursed doom. 
In a depth from which none find their upward way. 
Those prison limits hemming in the evils of the universe. 



178 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



The infernal vale, tlie darkened hemisphere of curse and 
crime ; hiding the face of God, and where despair takes 
up its last abode, and finds its fearful home ! We may 
not tell you how they are panged by the fierce rending 
of his wrath. We must not follow them, making the 
circuit of their gloomy orb, only that bitterness and 
regret may be renewed in anguish and dismay ! Yain, 
indeed, would be the attempt ; for, in what language, 
with what imagery, could we picture to you the undying 
worm of hell, imbibing immortality by preying on the 
anguish of the damned ! JSTo, the unwitnessed sufi'ering 
his wrath inflicts, during ages of agony, must remain by 
us unnamed, unvoiced, and, alas ! unsolaced too ! And 
thus we find him rich in all that belongs to God — to 
goodness and to greatness — to being blessing and 
eternity. But he was not only distingui shingly rich in 
himself. 

He was rich also in relation to the work of his hands. 
All was produced by him. He had a right of property 
in all. He exercised the right of ownership over all, 
and all things were referable to his will as the law of their 
being. And yet creation, in all the bewildering magni- 
tude of its vastness, is but a beam of his creating power, 
a mere emanation of his almighty greatness. The celes- 
tial division and higher compartments of the universe 
were his. His, by right of creation, as his word attests. 
Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. All the 
ranks, and lists, and files of the heavenly world. Earth 
too, and world's peopling the abysses of space. The 
grand planetary fabric, and the majestic stellar arrange- 
ments with which it is affined, are his also, all that 
rests, or rolls, or soars ! 

The infinitude and variety of his works and claims, 
render specification as difficult as you may feel it to be 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



179 



unnecesary. What did not belong to him ? His were 
the unlisted cattle dispersed upon a thousand hills : 
the beasts of the forest, the fowls of the air, and all the 
finny nations of the deep. His pencil colored, and his 
breath enriched, the flower. His strength gave stability 
to the hills, and his goodness enameled the vales. His 
was the hand of might, that kindled up the skies and 
outspread the glowing fields of Heaven. His the al- 
mighty mind, that first threw the outlines of creation 
over the rayless immense of darkness, and then 
intensely saw the grand gradual picture grow, imtil all 
this mighty wilderness of moving worlds trembled into 
birth ! 

In a word, he is the Creator of our world, and its 
sovereign, too ; and the sovereign not less than the Cre- 
ator of every other. And when we sum up the whole, 
how sublimely touching are the relations and aspects in 
which he is seen ! Going back to the era and wonders 
of nature's birth, and forward to the hour and struggles 
of her dissolution, we see his name and rule uniting all. 
The fullness of Godhead, in all its manifestations, has 
ever been impressed upon his person and character. 
To him we owe the lofty functions of thought, and the 
living play of emotion — the proud achievements of the 
one, and cherished fruition of the other ; while years, 
ages and generations, gathered into the grave of time 
and chronicled with the past, all publish his unwasting 
grandeur. 

And thus, by an irresistible process of reasoning 
and induction, we reach the conclusion, that you are 
not to conceive, as the fable of many would have it, 
that Jesus Christ is merely the favored representative — 
the strangely invested and supremely gifted plenipo- 
tentiary of Heaven — but the embodied Shekinah of 



180 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



Jehovah. His claims to Deity proper, as we have seen, 
are very different from what such a view impHes ; and, 
if we may so illustrate our meaning, are not to be 
resembled to the billow of ocean lifting its voice to tell the 
grandeur of the ''vasty deep/' but is not that deep 
itself. So far from this, rather, you are to recollect — - 
you are never to forget — the fullness of Godhead be- 
longs to him supremely and distinctively — belongs to 
him in all its distinguishing entireness and absolute 
eternity. And thus he was rich. Rich in himself — his 
own proper nature — and rich, also, in the possession of 
all possible, conceivable resources external to him- 
self. 

II. His subsequent abasement and humiliation. And 
what a vision have we here ! The light of the universe 
eclipsed and shining only in darkness ! Eclipsed, too, 
amid the very uncomprehending darkness where it 
shone ! He who had reigned from everlasting, in un- 
challenged supremacy and the illimitable grandeur of 
his Godhead — the glory of whose perfection had been 
the illumination of the universe, and the energies of 
whose nature were the guarantee of its preservation ; 
He who had strewn the path of eternity with the 
wonders of Omnipotence, and lighted up the mansions 
of infinity with the emanations of his bounty ; became 
a houseless wanderer in a world of penury and woe ! 
He who was infinite, unmeasured, and unapproached in 
all his perfections, circumscribed (if earth dare use the 
language) the infinitude of his being to the dimensions 
of a man ! He who had paved the Heavens with azure 
and strewn the earth with flowers— had given to the one 
their magnificent jewelry and robed the other in vernal 
loveliness — had not, in his humiliation, where to lay his 
head ! Earth was his bed, and open Heaven his cover- 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



181 



ing ! He who owned the whole animal kingdom, as the 
common shambles of his providence, was dependent 
upon the hospitality of earth for ''a piece of broiled 
fish and an honey-comb I" He whose were the whole 
fossil and mineral kino^doms, as a mere farthino' in his 
exchequer, could not, when taxed by the minions of 
Ctesar, pay his tribute money until the sea brought him 
the sum in the mouth of a fish ! The maker was more 
destitute than the made — the donor more needy than 
the donee — the giver than the beneficiary ! His eternity 
was invested with time. His omnipotence put on frailty. 
His immensity was subjected to limitation. The ever- 
living began to be. The source of knowledge learned 
wisdom — and the fountain of life expired in death 1 He 
was found in the real substantive form and structure of 
a man, *'born of a woman and made under the law" — 
and, in laying aside the grandeur and magnificence of 
his past eternity, in becoming man, he incurred, for the 
time, a relative and yet substantial degradation. The 
world's first gift to him, who came to save it, was a 
manger, and its last a cross ! And in this way poverty 
was dignified by the choice of the Son of God, and 
rendered sacred by his participation. 

Would you, then, appreciate his condecension in the 
midst of all this, institute the contrast between, and 
measure the distance from, the throne of God to earth ! 
Look at the weakness and misery of his birth — the 
wants, the cares, and the inquietudes of his life— the 
shame, agony and torture of his death ! How exquis- 
ite — how inefi'able 1 He became '"poor!" A word, 
how prolific of meaning 1 A word that, in the mystery 
and significance of' its import, affects alike the heart 
both of God and man ! A word that excites the sym- 
pathy of Heaven, at the same time it proclaims the 



182 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



wretcliedness of earth ! Little, indeed, did earth dream 
of such revealings of God's mercy from the poverty of 
his Son, when over his failing humanity she saw the pale 
king of shadows proudly waving the scepter of insult- 
ing triumph ! Yet this was but his passage from gloom 
to glory ; and the very darkness in which we see him 
shrouded, palled and sepulchered, was but the night 
precluding a morn brighter than a universe of suns ! 
While earth, all unheeding, turned away, the heavens 
bent thitherward to hear ! 

Would we could lift you up to the mighty conception ! 
He met the stroke of Heaven's high displeasure in all 
the calm magnificence of thought and purpose, and 
flung the dying splendor of his eye, in pity and forgive- 
ness, on his foes ! Let us, then, in the common fellow- 
ship of sin and suffering, fold these rich revealments of 
his love amid the throbs of each deserted heart ! Let us 
kneel, and, kneeling, throw around our fears the robe of 
his immortal purity 1 Hail him, then, ye perishing mil- 
lions of earth, as becoming poor only to enrich us. Faith, 
will solve the paradox and reconcile the contradiction. 
Man of sorrows — God of glory ! Stricken, pierced — 
exalted, reigning ! In this condescension, we see the 
measureless grandeur of Godhead lowered to the level 
of human conception, and gaze, with feelings without a 
name, upon the stupendous miracle of Justice adminis- 
tering the high functions of unyielding right by sacrifice, 
and receiving its most illustrious vindication in the 
death of the Son of God. 

III. His GRACE AND CONDESCENSION IN BECOMING POOR 

FOR US. We had wandered from God and declined his 
protection without provocation. He had lavished upon 
us, in the primeval fortunes of our race, the exuber- 
ance of his beneficence and kindness. The bounties, 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



183 



immunities and blessings of Heaven, were thrown about 
us like a wall of circumvallation. 

In the original allotment of humanity, on leaving the 
hands of the Creator, a single prohibition limited the 
vast fi'uition of the human mind. There was but one 
forbidden territory, and that was overshadowed by a 
single tree, the fruit of which alone was forbidden to 
human taste. There was but one specific interdict, and 
that related to the bending fruit of this solitary growth 
amid the outspreading orchards of primeval paradise, 
and every where in perspective about, an endless scene 
of enchantment and delight 1 

But the erring, unhappy pair, in evil hour, put forth 
the hand, and, for the paltry gratification of a most un- 
worthy curiosity, hazarded the incurrence of Heaven's 
fiercest wrath. Hence, their rebellion was not only 
direct and personal, but wanton and unprovoked — with- 
out any palliating preface or redeeming element. There 
was nothing to excuse it — not even the show of probable 
indemnity ; and upon this fearful lapse our federal de- 
fection fatally ensued. 

We need not tell you, that, in the paradise of his prim- 
itive location, where God communed with man and 
nature supplied his wants, all was fitness, charm and 
fruition — tending, directly, to promote his happiness in 
the garden of his innocence, and to secure even his 
organic existence to an illimitable date. All this is 
inferable from the fact, that the Creator, who alone 
knows what being and blessing are, modeled and finished 
man to his own liking ; and when, afterward, he passed 
in review before the living God, no improvement sug- 
gested itself, and he was pronounced very essentially 
good. 

And yet he sinned ; and stranger still, God would save 



184 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



him ! His heart was fixed upon him in kindness, and 
his bowels of celestial tenderness sounded toward him ! 
And how unutterably does the mystery deepen when 
the means are taken into the account ! What an abyss 
of compassion is here — what an ocean of good will to 
man ! What mind, though projecting thought with sun- 
beam speed and angel strength, can take its height ? 
What line of mortal or immortal reach can find sound- 
ings in its depths ? W^hat measure of earth's boasted 
numbers or geometry can compass its length or describe 
its breadth ? For the guilt of earth, dark and im- 
pentent, life became to him an arena of contest and 
blood, and his sufferings and death, in the amount 
of their agony and soreness, and especially their 
value, connecteld with the ends and aims of govern- 
ment, are to be regarded as equivalent to the pre= 
termitted punishment of all the offenders for whom he 
died. 

His visit to earth was a mission from Heaven, which 
rendered his return and admittance there the fruit of a 
fearful conflict — the spoil of a hard-won victory. Would 
you understand this, in the utterness and intensity of its 
meaning, look at the dreary, the felt hidings of his 
Father's face, and listen to his meek but thrilling com- 
plainings of anguish and abandonment ! Well may the 
laboring soul heave underneath the thought, *Hoo big 
for birth !" He came the unknown distance from Heaven 
to earth. Confounding interval— mysterious transition ! 
He passed, unheeding, the grandeur and array of 
Heaven's magnificent hierarchies — through all the won- 
drous grades and forms of intermediate being — through 
the wide waste of worlds, rich in the glory of a thou- 
sand suns, and made his home on earth — and in his 
death sternly combined the agonies of unequaled suffer- 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



185 



ing with the heroic struggles of the most lofty determ- 
ination ! 

And all to arrest a process moved in Heaven against 
the offender, and rescue the unhappy delinquent from 
an award of justice, that would have given him his 
duno'eon and his chain amono^ the damned, where the 
light of life and hope would have gone out forever. 
And allow us to remind you, that, having achieved all 
this for man, his unforo-ettino^ care and condescendincr 
sympathy, undiminished by the lapse of ages, continue 
still the same. 

lY. The motives in which this extraordinary trans- 
action ORIGINATED. And hcTC lano'uao^e falters beneath 
the burden of its own meaning, and the proudest sym- 
bols of human thought are equally imavailing. Even 
the pencil of the celestial Raphael, hued in the dies of 
Heaven's brilliant arch, and grouping upon the moral 
canvas with the lights and shadows of eternity, could 
furnish, at best, but a feeble picture ! Jesus Christ, him- 
self, has more than intimated that these motives, in their 
manifestation, form a new era even in his own eternal 
round of years and action. 

These motives, in the light of direct moral causation, 
existed without himself, and extrinsic of every thing 
personal to him. They related to us. They meditated 
our good. Our hopeless condition moved him to pity. 
He came upon the errand of our recovery. And this, 
too, when, wide over a world of sin and guilt, the star- 
less nio-ht of desolation reioned ! 

Our sin, in the fearful aggregate of its relations and 
bearings, was infinite. The rain of a thousand summers, 
the dews of Heaven and all ocean's waters, could not 
wash it out. The domain of kings could not furnish the 
sacrifice required, nor the wisdom of the schools say 
8^ 



186 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



where it was to be found, or of what it should consist. 
Enthroned amid the grandeur of his hosts, and guided 
by the counsel of his will, he knew his poverty to be 
the only remedy, and saw it omnipotent to save. Hence 
he emptied — he humbled himself, and bowed low to the 
doom he had made his own. 

And thus his name alone, first and finally, gave to 
man the hope of pardon. Away, then, with the slaught- 
ering priest, the flaming altar, and the bloody libation : 
'*A body hast thou prepared me," says our Almighty 
surety, and millions of immortals have hailed, in this 
single sentence, the kind reversal of their doom. 

The motives we aspire to, understand, therefore, are 
such as became the heart of God — the bosom of infinite 
compassion and perfection. We cannot analyze, we cannot 
describe them ; but, failing to do so, we can, meanwhile, 
imbibe the temper and tenderness of Heaven by reflect- 
ing upon them. He saw us exposed to all the bound- 
less horrors of a wrecked eternity. He was unwilling 
to display, as he might have done, his inflexible purity 
in our ruin without affording us the means of recovery ; 
and hence the dispensation of kindness in the text — a 
display, of benevolence not paralleled by any other in 
the wide bounds of the universe or the evolutions of 
destiny. It is preeminently the chef de ouvre, the chief 
display of God's mercy to man. It was a dispensation 
of kindness meeting us when most we needed aid, and 
meeting us with the very kindness, which, most of all, we 
needed. And here and thus we have the great and 
only law of man's return to God. 

V. The riches accruing to us in virtue of the pov- 
erty OF CHRIST. The original attainder, of which we 
have spoken, consequent upon the first transgression, 
was taken off, and man ceased to be held a criminal to 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



187 



Divine justice. The deadly forfeiture was removed and 
the ransom set was paid by our generous and victorious 
representative. We were received into favor with God. 
His wide and universal welcome to those who had wan- 
dered from him, was thrown abroad over our world, 
and his beseeching voice was upon it. Provision, am- 
ple and efficacious, was made for the guilty generations 
of our rebellious, curse-devoted planet. The dread 
circumference of impeding guilt, severing earth from 
intercourse with Heaven, was thrown down and man 
invited to his native skies. Upon repentance and faith, 
as the grand terms of eligibility to eternal life, he is 
justified and renewed. The Urim of Heaven is im- 
parted to the mind and its Thummim to the heart, and 
every perfection of Godhead becomes his guardian and 
his friend. 

We share, as the furniture of the inner man, a rich 
constellation of graces, and display as the badge of the 
outer a catalogue of living virtues. The path of life 
spreads out before us refulgent with the footsteps of our 
Master, and resounding with the promises of his love. 
We overlook, from a lofty position, the spoils and 
trophies of subjugated nature and a crucified world. In 
the triumphant career of duty, this lofty vocation holds 
all our powers and passions in sacred captivity, while we 
look forward, with accumulating joy, to a happiness 
essentially coextensive with the high capabilities of our 
nature and boundless as eternity. In language God 
alone could use, or had a right to inspire, ''all is yours." 
Not only the God-given grants and benefits already 
enumerated, but every and all other possible immunity 
and enjoyment. 

Christians! what has goodness denied you? Does 
the field contain a flower, or the heavens a star, they 



188 



GRANDEUR AN'D HUMIUATIOH 



are yours — all that blooms below or shines above. It 
was for you he studded the heavens with their starry 
isles — damasked the clouds with their glowing crimson, 
and gave to earth its beauty and attraction ! The Infin- 
ite mind felt sympathy with the joy not less than the 
sorrow of man, and it was for him — for us inhabiting 
earth and beholding Heaven — that he spread out the 
wonders and glories of nature, gorgeous, varied and 
ample, whether glittering with light or gay with mant- 
ling verdure. And these blessings, in the whole range 
of their comprehension, extend, by charter and tender, 
to the world at large, embracing its entire burden of 
families and nations. 

The mission of the Son of God shall everywhere and 
unboundedly widen the dominion of moral excellence, 
and its light and influence be triumphantly extended and 
diffused wherever heart shall beat or mind aspire." 
Prostrate rulers and their enlightened subjects, the 
gifted and the dowered, the mighty and the noble, no ~ 
longer appealing to the drapery of birth and fortune, 
or the sublime infirmity of misdirected ambition, shall 
e^'ery wdiere throng the vestibule of the temple and the 
altars of our faith. The poverty of Jesus Christ shall 
not only fill earth with converts, but crowd the seats ; 
and thrones of Heaven with conquerors. The princi- t 
pies of devout allegiance, and the exquisite emotions of » 
an approving conscience lost by sin, shall, in every place f 
and nation, be restored to the bosom of man. Earth, 
heretofore and long the sad theater of curse and calam- 
ity, tears and ruin, shall share the sympathy and inherit 
the blessino's of the world to come. Eden's lono- lost ^ 
and forgotten glories shall be restored to earth, and God, 
smiling on his new creation, shall bless it w^ith the 
visions of his love, until mountain shall shout to isle, J 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



189 



and ocean thunder back to main, The kingdoms of this 
world have become the kingdoms of our God and his 
Christ!" 

Utopian and glowing as such a picture may seem to 
be, it is not the language of unguarded religious warmth, 
of pulpit extravaganza, but in strict accordance with 
the assurances of prophecy and the facts of history up 
to the present hour. Already the broad surface of the 
moral world, with its ten hundred millions of immortals, 
is mapped out into one vast missionary diagram, and, 
throughout all its sections, the question is working out 
its own solution — from Labrador to Good Hope, and from 
the Steppes of Tartary to the Caribbean Archipelago I 
Such are the riches accruing to man and earth, in yirttie 
of the poverty of Jesus Christ. 

But does the narrow-minded, short-sighted infidel start 
at this, and blinking up to a subject he does not under- 
stand, allege, in overthrow of all our faith assumes on 
the subject, that the system of redemption upon whicli we 
insist, is, by its own theory, limited to our world, and 
does not extend to others — to all — and cannot, therefore, 
consistently be of God 1 We reply, the objection is per- 
fectly gratuitous, and is shown to be unsound and inap- 
plicable by the whole analogy of Revelation. Let tlic 
infidel who thus cavils, he knows not why, it may be, ex- 
cept that it is his vocation to cavil, even at the grandest 
themes of human thought — let the infidel show, that 
other worlds needed this redemption, and further, that 
the correction of their rebellion wotild have comported, 
as did that of earth, with the asserted justice and vindi- 
cated rights of the universal Judge ; and then, and not 
until then, will we pause to hold parley with the meager 
exceptions of his philosophy, or the beggarly abortions 
of his spleen. 



• 



190 GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 

The God of Christianity has magnified himself before 
the intelligences of all worlds, not by redeeming the un- 
fallen, it is true, but by furnishing proof, grateful to the 
Christian, adding to the joy of angels, and increasing 
the remorse even of the reprobate damned, that our 
planet, in its moral relations and the matter of its redemp- 
tion especially, is directly implicated with the high con- 
cerns of a more extended dispensation, a boundless range 
of cause and effect, in spreading among the hosts and 
millions of infinity, the knowledge and efifulgence of Je- 
hovah's character and love. 

YI. Our knowledge of this dispensation of Divine 
GOODNESS. We knolo this dispensatio?i of the grace of God^ 
from the testimony of his Word, in which it is revealed 
with due and grave authentication. The Scriptures as- 
sume this knowledge, in behalf of Christians, and every- 
where declare its attainability, as matter of direct and 
indispensable behoovement. By how far, therefore, we 
understand and credit the history of our redemption, by 
so far we know the grace in the text. 

We know it from the teachings and convictions of the 
Spirit of God, whose heavenly lessons are received and 
bosomed by the heart's intelligence, as among the dearest 
and most convincing of our mental and moral perceptions. 

We knoio it from our oicn consciousness, apart from 
which, we can know nothing. Without feeling, philoso- 
phically considered and universally applied — the felt re- 
lations of a proposition, for example — there is no knowl- 
edge of any kind — and the knowledge in question is pe- 
culiarly the heart's treasure — for God, who formed the 
heart, is teaching and training it for himself ; and so con- 
sidered, this Grace is a boon possessed, a felt enjoyment, 
and therefore known, or all knowledge is a dream and 
its name and its nature a cheat ? 



OF JESUS CHRIST, 



191 



'^Our spirits^^^ too, thus bear icit/iess,^' acljundively 
*^ with the spirit of God, to the same effect. It is the 
joint result of heavenly impression, and the heart's well- 
delined emotions in reply ; and Heaven and earth are 
both in error unless Tre know this grace ; for it is con- 
currently affirmed in the instance of the result, both by 
the agent and the recipient. 

We know this grace, further, from the unexceptionable 
testimony of hundreds, thousands and millions, in differ- 
ent ages and parts of the world, from Abel to the present 
hour. Reject this testimony, then, in connection with 
the Divine, already noticed, reaching us, as it does, with- 
in the ordinary channels of admitted proof, and you at 
once and forever subvert the foundations of all evidence. 
Truth is a fable, and faith an ignis fatuus, that leads to 
be^^'ilder and dazzles to blind. 

We hioic it from the Divine concluri ; for all these 
means and sources of the mind's information on this 
subject, are coincident in issue. The great Head of the 
Church has made it a distinguishing provision of the 
covenant of redemption. The administration of this cov- 
enant has been conformed to it in fact, and it has cheered 
and sustained the faithful in all ages, as we trust in God 
it is now cheering and sustaining you. 

We know it from our own cherished experience. Our 
successive consciousness, which constitutes experience, 
assures us of the fact. We share, not the occasional 
visits of heavenly influence, but its abiding presence, in 
greater or less degree, as it hallows the heart and adorns 
the life. 

We know it from the certainty and uniformity of its 
effects. A language all can understand, and, under- 
standing, none deny. Character and conduct, in the 
better part of the church of God, have been modeled 



192 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



upon and made to conform to it, and the interests of 
eternity are, by millions, fearlessly staked upon its val- 
idity. 

And^ finally, it accords with the genius of the Christian 
Dispensation: especially as a ^^ministration of the 
Spirit" — the reign of the Holy Ghost. This grace 
affects alike the heart and mind — was given to be felt, 
and is as certainly felt as given. To feel such gracious 
influence is to knov^ it : not to feel it, therefore, is not to 
know it, and not to know this grace is not to have it. 
Thus it is in proof — in luminous evidence before the 
mind — that we know as Christians, the children of God, 
the abundant and abounding grace proclaimed in the 
text. 

The question of the moral aspect in which we stand to 
God, is not one of unsettled conjecture or ecclesiastical 
arbitrement. We are not left, cruelly left, by the best 
of Beings, to pose and dream, and thus vaguely and 
darkly spell out a title to eternal life, amid the doubtful 
casuistry and unaccredited imaginings of a morbid, mis- 
guided sensibility ; nor has it been left to the interested 
caprice, the usurping policy, or ghostly dictation of an 
arrogant, despotic Priesthood, to settle and adjust our 
relations with Heaven. 

Faith in Christ, the conscious inhabitation of the Holy 
Spirit, together with the appropriate fruits, tell us what 
our relation to Heaven is, and entitle us to respond to 
the text, as one oi the most momentous verities of our 
moral history. Vve know, in truth, the o-race of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, ani undoubtingly triumph in the as- 
surance of acceptance with him. Power of the Highest \ 
energy of the Heavens ! give this knowledge to the audi- 
ence ! Let it thrill through every chamber of the soul, 
and flood the heart with rapture ! 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



193 



FiisALLY : We kotice the tois-e of sentiment and state 
OF feeling this subject should inspire. The grace in 
the text imparts to man, and implants in the mind and 
heart, those sentiments and feelings which, in higher de- 
gree and full perfection, glow and circulate about the 
throne of God. It peoples the soul of man with new 
thoughts and new aifections, such as existed in his un- 
fallen state, when there was nothing to regret, and shall 
be prolonged in the Heaven to which he aspires, where 
God is all in all. 

This subject, further, should inspire us with a sensp. of 
our ignorance, especially as it regards our moral rela- 
tions and final destiny, unvisited by light from Heaven. 
It should teach us meekly to ask wisdom of God, and, 
guided by his word, look up to an Intelligence and Be- 
nevolence above us. 

It should insj)ire us with a seyue of our criminal un- 
uorihuL'Ss : reminding us that we have but too fearfully 
deserved a thousand hells without suffering one, and that, 
insanely wedded to the world, he threw open to us the 
gates and riches of heavenly commerce, and allured us 
by the wealth and grandeur of his throne. 

It should inspire us with a sense of entire dependence — 
a felt and crushing sense of our real weakness and rela- 
tive unimportance, at the same time that we are permit- 
ted to rely on Almighty strength, and know that all is 
well. In this way, humility best secures the happiness 
of man, and asserts the claims of Heaven upon the un- 
doubting trust ol a dependent world. 

It should inspire us vjilh zeal and earnestness. Without 
the one and the other, there isy there can be, no piety. 
The excellence of Heaven is immeasurably in advance 
of that of earth — that of the best of her children — but it 
is to be won ; and you should instantly throw yourselves 



194 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



upon a career of emulation with saints and angels for tlie 
prize awaiting you at the close of the struggle. 

It should inspire and animate us with hope and comfort — 
hope of Heaven and comfort on our way thither : the 
luster of your virtues on earth typing the splendor of 
your crowns in Heaven, and blending with the glories of 
immortality. 

het this subject especially inspire us loith gratitude. To 
Heaven we are deeply indebted for goodness, multiform 
and m^atchless. But our motives to gratitude have re- 
ceived the measure of their fullness and immortality, in 
the great achievement of redemption. Let gratitude, 
then, warm our hearts. Let it flame on your altars 
and peal in your anthems. Let it rise as the incense of 
feeling, and reach the throne of the Eternal, as an ex- 
halation more grateful than ''Arabia sacrificed, and all 
her spicy deserts in a flame ! 

But it may be you are still indifferent to this whole 
subject. If so, we** must leave you to reflect, that, chal- 
lenged by the throne of the universe, you refuse your 
homage ; and, by doing so, have deliberately placed in 
jeopardy all the interests of immortality ; and we can 
only weep your doom, every hour exposed to the fearful lia- 
bilities of a deep and dure damnation nearing in the 
future ! 

IN'ot so the Christian, however. He has nothing to 
fear. Encompassed as he may be with occasional gloom, 
he still sees the glimpses of immortality breaking forth 
upon our twihght world. The night-flower of belief in 
his bosom blooms on, even in darkness, and yields its 
perfume. Kays of light are seen shooting athwart, and 
pillars of truth and splendor rising in the midst of, chaos ! 
With martyr trust and fearlessness he pursues his course, 
and we are left to admire his footsteps, as he urges his 



OF JESUS CHRIST. 



196 



way over the face of our world, in sympatliy with good- 
ness and grandeur, gladness and sorrow ! 

Such, then, imperfectly, are the moral grandeur and 
illustrious issues of the great mission we have attempted 
to explain and enforce, and we cannot conclude without 
asking you, one and all, what share you propose to your- 
selves, in restoring earth, by the diffusion of the Gospel, 
to friendship with God and the dominion of virtue ? 
The means and methods are before you. The appeals 
to them, many and oft, you are familiar with, and among 
them we leave you to choose. You have it in your pow- 
er to advance this great interest in a thousand different 
forms, and Heaven has drawn upon each one of you to 
the full extent of your ability. On and forward, then, 
to the store-house of God and the arena of action, re- 
solved that you will distinguish yourselves by triumph in 
this great struggle, or die an army of martyrs in the 
attempt ! 

With regard to this great dispensation of the grace of 
God, we only add, that, in this life, though assured 
of the fact, the magnitude of this grace is known only in 
part. But, when in Heaven^ — the Heaven to which we 
tend — the ransomed and improved energies of an inde- 
structible mind shall be let loose among the entrancing 
objects of an eternal world, and shall expatiate at will, 
with angelic ease and seraph buoyancy, over a widely 
extended scene of heavenly enlargement and deathless 
fruition — then w^e shall see, as we are seen, with unerr- 
ino^ intuition, and know, as we are known, in the societv 
of celestials, dwelling forever in the neighborhood of the 
throne of God, and beneath the embowering canopy of 
the Tree of Life, where millions of harps, strung to rap- 
ture, in unison complete, with one vibration, shall hymn 
redemption's theme and sound Jehovah's praise 1 



I 



196 



GRANDEUR AND HUMILIATION 



And what boon, we ask, witliin the gift of Heaven or 
the grasp of immortality, would not be poor compared 
with this ! Words may not tell our meaning here ; it 
cannot live in language. That mind alone where God is 
templed and his truth adored, can lift itself to the mighty 
conception. It is glory beyond the wonder of the heart. 
It is a dignity of which earthly fortune and state, so far 
from being elements, are too low and little to be even 
accompaniments 1 And whether we contemplate our- 
selves already in Heaven, filed and pavilioned around 
the throne of thrones, or on our way thither, what care 
we for the fame of heroes or the blood of kings ; the re- 
nown of dead centuries or ancestry unknown ; the found- 
ers of empire or the subverters of thrones 1 Noble in 
the heart's heraldry, and with names emblazoned in im- 
mortal registry before the throne of God, the trance that 
once made such trifles dear is broken, and all is lost in 
the consciousness, that smiles, reflected from approving- 
Heaven, are wreathing the cup of human woe ! 

What have we to fear, although Chaos itself should be 
seen reveling amid the ruins of demolished worlds, and 
Time's last storm, howling to its close, shall wail the 
death-dirge of their passing away ! when, amid it all, 
the faith and affection of the Gospel are still seen curling 
around the eternal columns of their strength ! 

Christians ! what need we care, although on earth we 
were so poor and low we had nor purse nor pillow ; so 
few and trodden down we had no power ; and hamlets, 
huts and grottoes, were the places where we wept and 
prayed ; if these are to be exchanged for a residence 
amid the jaspers and chrysolites, the emeralds and 
sapphires, of the heavenly Jerusalem ! 

What though soiled by the dust of toil, or damp with 
the dungeon's dew — struggling amid tattered want along 



OP JESUS CHRIST. 



197 



our lone and periled path — when even here we find our- 
selves invested with glory in the night of our being, and 
sustained by hopes guiding and pointing us to the tem- 
ple hymn and the heavenly harp above, where the un- 
folding apocalypse of Heaven's eternal grandeur and 
loveliness shall introduce us to new worlds and laws of 
mind and morals — shall make us familiar with the inner 
mechanism and lofty movements of the universe, and 
where, with as few temptations to obliquity as Omnipo- 
tence itself, we shall find ourselves forever sphered and 
throned, above the reach and beyond the ravages of 
time, and chance, and change ! 



198 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



SEUMON VII. 

THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 
"Tell his disciples he is risen from the dead/'^ — Math, xxviii, 7. 

Every occasion like the present renews the recollection 
and conviction, that Christianity, in perfect analogy with 
the laws and operations of nature, has been, for a suc- 
cession of ages, working out the solution of its own truth 
and mystery. And the present century is, perhaps, as 
striking and convincing in the number and force of its 
demonstrations to this effect, as any of its many, its 
eventful, predecessors. 

It is true of Christianity, that, although it exhibits a 
most surprising multiplicity of elements and relations, 
yet it can only be viewed as one consistent, refulgent 
whole. There is everywhere the most perfect consent and 
combination of parts — a oneness, a wholeness, an uncom- 
poundedness of character, sought for in vain among the 
works or the thoughts of man. 

And among all the interesting facts, varied topics and 
magnificent comjoartments of revealed truth, mutually 
operating as coefficients in the production of Christian 
principle and the formation of Christian character, few, 
if any, claim an intensity of interest equal to that with 
which the inquiry now before us is invested. 

It is true, the great fact we contemplate, and its im- 
mediate results, reach us, as everything of contemporary 
date must, mellowed and obscured by the dark hue of 
ages ; yet it is possible so to elaborate and examine the 
subject, as to bring it vividly to view and present it in 
living picture before the mind. In attempting this, in 
part, at least, and however imperfectly, at our present 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 



199 



interview, ^e invoke no guidance but that of inspiration 

and good sense, and we deprecate no consequences not 
inconsistent ivith pulpit worth and the hope of contribu- 
ting to the happiness of man. 

The short sentence announced as the text, not less than 
the very summary, unpretending paragraph in which it 
is found, celebrates, in no equivocal way, and with the 
emphasis of full conviction, the Resurrection of the Son of 
God. The well knovrn event of his death, and without 
which the language of the text would be unmeaning, had 
but recently taken place ; and it occurred in the accom- 
plishment of the Divine purposes as an eventful expedi- 
ent, upon the intervention of which depended the re- 
demption of the world and its offered share in the coming 
glories of eternity. The evidence, however, of results of 
such magnitude and grandeur following upon the death 
of Christ, depended upon his resurrection. When, there- 
fore, this splendid achievement over the powers of dark- 
ness and the hopes of hell had been realized, on the part 
of his followers, in the triumphant rising of the Son of 
God from the darkness of the tomb, angels felicitate the 
joy of the Church, by celebrating the resurrection of its 
illustrious Head in the lanc^uao;e of the text, Tell his 
disciples he is risen from the dead" ! 

It is the language of heart-felt gladness, of dawning 
hope and conscious triumph ; and we wish it to become 
the motto of your devotion on the present occasion. 'Now 
that the prophecies relating to the humiliation of the 
Son of God are accomplished ; the shadows and prefigura- 
tions of his death substantiated ; his decisive action with 
the powers of darkness over ; the righteousness of the 
law fulfilled ; the payment of the price of human re- 
demption completed ; and the work which the Father 
gave him to do finished, and finished in the highest pos- 



200 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



sible degree of perfection ; we say to you — to the 
Churcli — to the friends of the Redeemer and the hopes 
of the desponding — He is risen ! He is risen, and exhib- 
its, in his own proper person, the stupendous fact of life 
recalled from the grave by Him who lives forever ! 

The gloom of bereavement, the night of sorrow, has 
passed away, and the scene that late was colored by the 
cloud of death, and held the hearts of thousands sad, is 
now everywhere mapped and glowing with the gushing 
radiance of morning — the rising glories of new-born hope ! 
In the remarks we have to offer upon this subject, we 
select but two topics as particularly worthy your atten- 
tion — First, the Fact, and Secondly, the Purposes and 
Results of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The evidence accessible in support of the assumed fact 
that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, admits, v/e are 
aware, of a much more extended classification ; but, at 
present, Vv^e shall only notice it as circumstantial and posi- 
tive, ill its general nature and w.ore explicit hearings. 

We do not propose an extended elaborate argument, 
but barely a specimen — a miscellaneous exemplification 
of the advantages possessed by the Christian in any con- 
troversy that may arise on this subject. And it is more 
especially our wish to enlarge the views, increase the 
consolation and accredit the hopes, of the faithfnl, whose 
attention we may have while we address you. 

When we propose availing ourselves of circumstantial 
evidence in support of the Resurrection of Christ, we 
intend to inquire, hoiv far the fact, as narrated, supports 
itself and is probably true, in its consecutive details^ in 
view of the nature and fitness of things. The second divi- 
sion of proof, will be an attempt to estimate the amount 
of evidence existing, extrinsic of the fact^ which can^ never- 
theless, be brought to bear legitimately upon the proof of its 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



201 



occurrence. This last class of evidence, is based upon the 
universally conceeded fact, that that evidence which 
can be judged of by the senses, and which has been sub- 
mitted to the inspection of multitudes, in every aspect 
and variety of familiar exhibition, and faithfully pre- 
served and handed down to us in the authentic records 
of history, must be positive in its nature, and will be so 
regarded by every master of mind and the laws of evi- 
dence. Reject the truth of this proposition, and the 
deed invests universal history with the attributes of 
fiction, and the memoirs of all the successive actors in 
the great drama of human life become a fable and a 
cheat. The fundamental laws of human belief are totally 
subverted, and universal doubt ends in the ever-increas- 
ing fluctuation of all our hopes and all our aims. 

The circumstances of the case^ the.n^ we allege first^ 
'prejpare the way^ and strongly incline unbiassed intelli- 
gence to credit the assumption^ that Jesus Christ rose from 
the dead. 

A reasonable presumption in favor of the fact, is, that 
Heaven had frankly and explicitly rested the truth of the 
Christian Religion upon its accomplishment, and it was 
accordingly typically announced in symbol, and also 
plainly foretold both by prophets and by our Lord 
himself. 

Hence, agreeably to the instituted meaning of the 
ancient types and shadows — once constituent elements 
of a now defunct dispensation — Jesus Christ was not 
only destined to suffer in the significant rite of the 
Passover, but to rise triumphant in the first fruits of the 
harvest. 

In the virtual sacrifice and miraculous rescue of Isaac 
upon Mount Moriah, we have preshadowed alike, the 
death and the Resurrection of Christ. 



202 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



His confinement for three days and nights in the heart 
of the earth had been strikingly prefigured by the mys- 
terious detention of the prophet for the same length of 
time in the stomach of the fish. Little indeed did the 
borderers of Israel, upon the shores of the Mediterranean, 
who heard the story, and still less the ill-fated mariners 
who threw the Prophet overboard, suppose that this cir- 
cumstance, so trivial in common deeming, was to become 
big with meaning in the plans of Omniscience, by sym- 
bolizing the term of Messiah's exanimation, and the time 
of his revival from the dead. 

The translation, in their case reversing the common 
law^ of humanity, of Enoch and Elijah, both illustrious 
personal types of the Son of God, had demonstrated the 
indestructible elements and final indissolubility of the 
human body, and preintimated, in no obscure way, its 
resurrection from the dead. And if extraordinary virtue, 
in conformity with the Divine arrangements, entitled 
these men to overstep the grave and reach the abodes 
of the blest without tasting death, it furnishes strong 
presumption, that the sinless humanity of our Lord 
could not be holden of death, nor long remain in the 
custody of the tomb. The pains of the one and the 
penalties of the other, were endured by him only as our 
surety, belonged only to a brief term — a single paragraph 
of his history ; and when he had finished the great work 
of redemption, he resumed his life from the grave, to die 
no more. 

That Jesus Christ should resume immortality amid 
the shades of death, and become the subject of a 
second birth from the inanition of the grave, was among 
the least equivocal intimations of infinite foresight — 

Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee the 
application of which, as originally intended, is, in the 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



203 



New Testament, limited to the Resurrection of Jesus 
Christ. 

The same prophetic discernment had also said, with 
the most determinate significance, that He should enter 
the grave free among the dead that is, not as a sub- 
ject, but voluntary visitant, with the power and purpose 
of returning. 

The unrivaled prophet and bard of Israel had, centu- 
ries before, predicted his death, and left it upon record 
that his life should not terminate in the grave, ''nor his 
flesh see corruption." 

He had said to the Church, the deceased faithful — 

Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body 
shall they rise." 

Hosea, as usually interpreted, had announced his 
revival from the grave on the third day after the great 
sacrifice of the Christian Dispensation, and he himself 
had frequently assured the Church and the world of 
the same fact, during his persona] ministrations upon 
earth. 

He had said he would rise, and that he would rise the 
tkird d^ij." The finger of prophecy not only pointed 
to the fact, that he should rise, but the dial of Heaven 
rested on the hour destined to witness his rising ! If, 
then, he had not risen at the time and under the circum- 
stances designated, by his own and Heaven's showing he 
had been a deceiver, and the falsification of his preten- 
sions had been within the competency of the most unlet- 
tered discernment. 

Again, the declarations of our Lord, the assurances of 
prophecy, and the anticipations of his fid ends, on this 
subject; were known and read cf all men. And, accord- 
ingly, his Resurrection was vigilantly guarded against 
both by Jews and Romans, and every possible measure 



204 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



of prevention had been duly adopted and effectively re- 
sorted to. 

The authority of the Jewish Sanhedrim, with all its 
watchful spleen and hoary malice, was interposed for the 
safety of the body. 

The Proconsular seal of the Roman Empire told the 
intruder that death would aveno^e its violation. 

Sixty ruffian soldiers armed with spear and javelin, 
were present to do their duty. 

His grief stricken disciples had yielded to despair and 
came not near his tomb. And, surely, calculating upon 
principles merely human, sixty living men, bred in a 
camp and inured to arms, could prevent the escape 
of one dead one — could they not ? And yet, on the 
morning of the third day our Lord is risen 1 IN'ow let 
skepticism account for the fact, and tell us how it 
happened. 

Two angels, who had sped their delegated way from 
Heaven to earth, to reassure the trembling hopes of 
the Infant Church, announce his rising at two different 
times, as the express verification of his own assurances — 
''He is risen, as he saidJ^ 

It was attested by the convulsions and commotions of 
an earthquake, a kind of argument, by the way, intelli- 
gible to all, and resisted by none who witnessed it. Even 
the guard, in presence of the Imperial Labarum, felt 
that it was the avenging hand of God, which froze their i 
blood with horror, paled their cheek with fear, and 6 
stretched them lifeless on the ground ! For these very 
keepers or sentinels — a division of the Roman legion — I 
sixty in number, stationed at the sepulcher, to resist the f 
rising of the Savior, petrified with fear at the fact of his ii 
rising, sank powerless to earth, and ''became as dead : 
men." And when they rose and fled, it was to tell, that \ 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



206 



true his words of power had broken the stern empire 

of death, and encompassed humanity with the light of 
hfe ! 

Many of the saints that had been interred, perhaps, for 
ages, arose as witnesses from the imtraveled bourn of the 
future — appeared in the palpable form of human beings 
in the streets of the once holy, but now accursed city— 
and offered their reproduced bodies, fresh from the 
grave, to the gaze of inquisitive thousands, as proofs of 
the fact, and a part of the spoil gracing his triumph. 

As might be expected, the soldiers (the military guard) 
fled, and published everywhere the fact of the super- 
natural rising of the Son of God. Truth and conviction 
forced upon their understanding and senses so impul- 
sively, made them honest for the time, and they told the 
story as the facts occurred, until they were finally bribed, 
but unfortunately too late for the success of the forgery, 
by their now defeated and confounded masters, to tell 
the most unfeasible falsehood — the most improbable lie 
that ever hung on the lips of sin or hell — that is, being 
well paid for it, they came into court and swore to a fact 
that should have taken place confessedly while they were 
asleep ! And this too, although it was death by the 
Roman law for a sentinel to sleep upon his post, as we 
learn from Josephus, Tacitus, Dion and others. What 
would you think of a witness appearing in any well reg- 
ulated court of judicature, and for a given sum of money, 
solemnly deposing in the name of God, that certain per- 
sons did thus and so while he was asleep ! If witnesses 
of this description, thus pliant and purchasable, are 
necessary to the hopes and plans of infidelity — v,diy, then, 
God preserve honest men from such an interest, for they 
certainly have no business with it, and are found, to say 
the least, in very questionable company. 



206 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



The plain state of the case is this : the body is missing 
on the third day ; and let the guard, icho are alone respon- 
sible for its safety y account for its disappearance from the 
sepulcher. And let this be done in some rational, reli- 
able way, without resorting to a fabrication so utterly 
unskillful and bungling, that, to believe it, a man must 
possess the previous qualification of mindless stupidity, 
or be so influenced by the sympathies of invincible 
prejudice, as to be unable to disbelieve anything 
that may happen to be told him, by his friends or his 
party. 

This, hovv^ever, allow us to say, it is not within the 
competency of infidel ingenuity to do, and can be done 
in no way except by yielding to the Scripture account of 
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Although the success of our argument does not depend 
upon it, we may be allowed to premise here, by the way, 
that, before the skeptic can discredit the fact of the Resur- 
rection of our Lord, he must invalidate the truth and 
authenticity of the Christian Revelation, which circum- 
stantially narrates and everywhere assumes this most 
momentous verity. 

We will not mock the impotence, the hopeless inability, 
of the infidel, by asking him to attempt that, in failure 
of which his superior friends have felt their infirmity 
and were glad to retire. It would scarcely be generous, 
we know ; and yet how can we fail to remind him of what 
awaits him, in a muster of the enemies and the arms of 
Christianity, in which — archangel fallen — the devil him- 
self, with all his intellectual preeminence, has exhausted 
alike his skill and his patience, and the most illustrious, 
the first-born of his children, have grown grey and died 
in rage or the inertness of despair, from generation to 
generation, without effecting anything worthy of name 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



207 



or notice. So certainly, therefore, as tlie Bible is true, 
thus inevitably has our Lord risen from the dead, and 
revived our sinking hopes by the acclaiming salutation : 
am he that ^'as dead, but, behold, I am alive forever 
more.'' 

Philosophical skeptics, however, apart from the his- 
torical question at issue, have objected, first, that the 
resurrection of the dead was a natural, or rather phys- 
ical, impossibility. And if this be so, all must see 
that Christ is not risen." 

By others it has been u.rged, secondly, as a moral 
impossibility, not resulting from any of the known moral 
relations of our nature. And, if this be so, our Lord is 
still in the grave. A moment's attention, however, will 
satisfy you, that both these objections are absurd, viewed 
only in the light of philosophy, or tested by any allow- 
able process of sound inductive reasoning. 

And, first : The resurrection of the dead is not a 
natural or physical impossibility ; for, certainly, he who 
originally produced, as admitted by the infidel, the 
human body from the dust of the earth, having pur- 
posed it, could as easily give its reproduction the same 
origin. Its reproduction from the dust of the earth, in 
the resurrection, carries with it no implication of impos- 
sibility not involved in its original production from the 
same source. The objection, therefore, proving too 
much, proves nothing, and, of course, furnishes the 
conclusion, that it is Q;ood for nothino'. 

Nor is it, secondly, morally impossible for God to 
raise the dead. JSTothing is morally impossible with God 
but what is inconsistent with his moral character. But, 
in view of what data will the infidel assume, it is incon- 
sistent with the moral character of God, or his purposes 
entering into the formation of that character, to raise 



208 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



the dead ? Would not the man subject himself to the 
imputation of mental fatuity, not less than moral lu- 
nacy, who would attempt to prove it ? 

Could it not be much more readily proved, that it is 
most revoltingly inconsistent with all that is known of 
the moral character of God, to decree the death of man 
w^ithout the hope or possibility of revival ? This, as we 
reason on the subject, is the only staggering improba- 
bility in the case. All reasoning, therefore, against the 
resurrection of Christ a priori, as impossible, is to dog- 
matize without reason — is sheer, naked foolishness, with- 
out any mixture or semblance of sound philosophy. 

W e are now prepared, perhaps, to approach the chief 
argument of infidelity against the resurrection of Christ, 
and thus meet the anti- Christian disputant as we find 
him proudly for tressed in his own favorite citadel. We 
allude to the grand argument of Mr. Hume against all 
miracles as incredible, and their assumption as foolish, 
because absurd — because inconsistent with the common 
experience of mankind. His argument, in all its force, 
is, that no evidence can establish a miracle, inasmuch as 
it is more probable that the witnesses would deceive, or 
might be deceived themselves, than that the Almighty 
would transgress or depart from the ordinary established 
laws of nature, for any purpose whatever. 

In reply, we remark, that more than one important 
question is tamely begged by the sophist in the mere 
act of hypothecating and stating the objection — a 
rather suspicious start, or bad beginning, to say the 
least of it. The sophist assumes that the course of na- 
ture is tied down and controlled by definite, fixed laws, 
unalterable even by the Lawgiver himself who imposed 
them, and that all miracles are breaches, and, of neces- 
sity, directly violative of them. That the objection may 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



209 



have any force, it is indispensable that the objector 
produce the code of which he speaks, and show that, 
beyond all doubt, miraculous interposition is precluded 
from the government of nature ; otherwise, it may turn 
out that such interposition by the Lawgiver, in the sus- 
pension or modification of his own laws, may be one of 
the very laws of which the objector speaks. 

God is the author of nature, and the sole ordainer of 
nature's laws, and whatever he may do, in the depart- 
ment of nature, cannot possibly offer violence to either. 
But, further, it is known and admxitted, that the appa- 
rent deviations from established laws, in the career of 
the comet — the devastations of the whirlwind — the con- 
vulsions of the earthquake — the burst of the volcano, 
and so of the rest — are all really constituent parts of a 
regular system — the system of nature ; and let the skep- 
tic show, if he can, that miraculous interpositions are 
less so. The one is not more remarkable in the moral 
than the other in the natural world, nor can the truth 
of the exceptions, in any way, affect the undoubted 
verity of the general rule. 

A miracle is an extra exertion of Almighty energy in 
the government of the universe. And, to say that God 
has not reserved to himself the right of such exertion, 
and occasionally acted upon the reservation, is a most 
illogical and absurd begging of the whole question, be- 
side being foolish and irrational in itself ; for it is the 
dictate, alike of reason and common sense, that the dis- 
covery and attestation of truths, infinitely important to 
more worlds than one, render the display of super- 
natural power at once reasonable and necessary, and, in 
a course of extraordinary events, such as Christianity 
assumes, natural and to be expected withal. 

Grant that the argument in favor of Christ's resurrec- 
9* 



210 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



tion turns mainly, though not exclusively, by any 
means, upon the testimony of the apostles. Yet, if we 
look at the evidence they furnish, and their manner of 
furnishing it, we shall be satisfied, first, with regard to 
their undoubted sincerity ; secondly, their obvious men- 
tal competency ; and, finally, their Divine commission. 
Deceived, themselves, they could not have been. The 
supposition is an outrage upon every principle of moral 
certainty. 

They had been in constant and intimate intercourse 
with our Lord for more than three years ; and, therefore, 
knew him well beyond the possibility of deception, in 
this respect. 'No artful or ghostly process of legerde- 
main — no visual or phantasmagoric illusion — could possi- 
bly have deceived them, with regard to his proper per- 
sonal identity. They saw him frequently, at difi'erent 
times, and each time under different circumstances, for 
forty days successively after his resurrection, with all 
the advantages of an intimate acquaintance of at least 
forty-two months before. He ate and drank, conversed 
and conferred with them. He wrought miracles before 
them. They handled his person and felt his wounds. 
And when he ascended, he did it publicly— in their 
presence, and before their eyes, and all in the broad 
daylight of Heaven. Anything like self-deception, 
therefore, with the apostles, or being themselves de- 
ceived, was impossible. 

To say the apostles and other witnesses were rude, 
unlettered persons, and, therefore, not competent wit- 
nesses in the premises, is not less preposterous. Eeply- 
ing to the charge, in part, by pointing to the classic, 
immortal productions of a portion of them, as found in 
the Sacred Volume, it will be proper to remind you, that 
the most skillful naturalist would not be better qualified 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



211 



to know and identify a friend Tritli whom he had recently 
parted — say the day before yesterday, as in the case be- 
fore us — than would the most unlettered plebeian or 
rudest commoner. 'No acquaintance with the laws of 
light, or the wonders of vision, would be necessary to 
enable a witness to swear to the well-known person of a 
friend repeatedly seen and conversed with in open day- 
light. Indeed, the farther we prosecute the argu- 
ment, the more decidedly does infidelity become the 
loser. 

The objection just dismissed, having failed to answer 
its purpose, it is alleged, further, that the apostles, 
although not deceived themselves, attempted, and not 
without success, the deception of others. To urge this 
objection, is to say they acted without motive, aim or 
hope. You assume that men of sense, for all admit 
them to be such, labored, suffered and sacrificed, with- 
out the hope of gain or emolument of any kind, in the 
immediate prospect of the ax, the cross and the stake, 
only for the love of infamy on earth, andwith the appall- 
ing certainty of perdition beyond the grave ! For they 
knew, if they were deceivers, that it was in the power 
of every school-boy in Jerusalem to throw them back 
upon the bosom of the world, a pack of perjured villains ; 
and all they knew of God and virtue, taught but too 
explicitly, that, for such deception, they must, through 
all the eternal future, be outcasts from the one and the 
other. 

I Having thus glanced at this principal argument, long 
regarded as the chef de ouvre of infidel sophistry, we 
proceed to show, that we have positive OAid induhitahle ev- 
idence^ that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, 
\ He was seen alive, after his passion,'' by scores and 
I hundreds of persons, and these reputable for truth and 



i 



212 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



integrity, who knew him well, intimately and infallibly, 
for a term of years before and up to the very day of 
his death ; and their testimony, in the face and under the 
eye of hostile millions, has been transmitted to ns, from 
age to age, with every mark — all the distinctive sig- 
natures of authentic narration and historical proba- 
bility. 

If, therefore, the fact of the resurrection of Christ be 
not proved ; then, to transfer and apply the reasoning as 
will always be done by the common sense of mankind, 
it follows, by inevitable deduction, that the world is 
without proof that the Csesars ever reigned in Rome or 
the Ptolemies in Egypt. 

The personal appearances of our Lord, to his friends 
and others, were numerous and striking. We know it 
has been assumed, in prejudice to the Gospel history, 
and plead in bar to the reception of the Christian argu- 
ment, that Christ only appeared to his personal friends 
after his resurrection. This, however, though conceded 
too generally by Christian apologists, and greatly stressed 
by infidels, is not correct in whole or in part. And, 
in proof, it is a singular fact, that he first appeared to 
the legionary guard, who were present by the appoint- 
ment of those who had crucified him. These watchful 
enemies were not only present, but banded, armed and 
sworn to prevent his escape, and yet, impotently, one 
and all saw him. rise and disappear. 

Here, then, w^ere three score of his enemies, who saw 
the risen Savior before any of the disciples saw him, 
who were the first asserters of the fact, and first 
preached the astounding story to the amazed listeners of 
Jerusalem ; and, in this respect, had the vantage ground 
of the whole school of the disciples ; and, notwithstand- 
ing the incredible fraud they were subsequently bribed 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



213 



to attempt — having it so perfectly in our power to detect 
and expose it — we are allowed to avail ourselves of their 
original testimony, given under no possible suspicion of 
improper motive. 

As the Jews and Eomans had publicly confided all to 
the military guard, duly appointed in the case, and had 
themselves declined all further connection with it, when 
the risen Savior appeared to the guard, he had triumph- 
antly vindicated his mission before the proper representa- 
tives hath of Roman and Jewish authority ; and to have 
otherwise presented himself to his enemies, would have 
been a departure from the uniform course of indepen- 
dent and dignified action, by which his whole life had 
been distinguished. 

But, again, our Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene at 
the sepulcher, on the very morning he arose, and under 
circumstances rendering this early and amiable disciple 
of his a most important witness. 

On the same day, shortly after, he appeared to other 
women of the first Christian family, three or four in 
number, on their way from the sepulcher. 

On the evening of the same day again, he appeared 
to Cleophas and another disciple, on their way to Emmaus, 
a small villaQ;e some six miles from Jerusalem. 

He appeared soon after to Simon Peter; and how 
instructive, how impressive was the interview ! Guilt- 
stricken and degraded, sorrow for the past had rudely 
chiseled the unfortunate Peter into a statue of grief, 
until his risen Master forgave and reassured him. 

He appeared to ten of his disciples in the guest- 
chamber at Jerusalem, rendered sacred by previous 
meetings for conference and prayer. 

On the eighth day after his resurrection, the first 
Christian Sabbath, 'Mie appeared to the Eleven." 



214 THE JlESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



Soon after, "be appeared to seven of the disciples at 
the Sea of Tiberius." 

He appeared again to ''the Eleven, apart in a moun- 
tain of Galilee." 

Under circumstances of unusual solemnity and distinc- 
tion, he appeared to ''the Eleven again," just before his 
ascension. 

He was seen by "more than five hundred" in a 
"mountain of Galilee," long before placed in nomina- 
tion by himself for this special purpose : and this exhib- 
ition of himself was looked forward to as the "public test 
of the final authentication of his claims. 

Yet, again, he appeared to "the Eleven" in Mount 
Olivet, who saw him rise refulgent from the mountain, 
until the opening heavens received him cut of sight, 
and throned him whence he came ! 

He vfas seen by " James the Less." James the Just 
belonged to "the Eleven," often quoted before — was a 
member of the college of the apostles, and his testimony 
is merged in theirs. James the Less, therefore, comes in 
as a separate additional witness. 

He was seen by Stephen, the proto-martyr, as he rose 
to Heaven amid a shower of stones, and the unmingled 
curses of the mob 1 

He Vv^as seen by Paul, as one born out of due time, 
not only on his way to Damascus, but when, afterward, 
the light of the "third Heaven " taught him the myste- 
ries of his creed. 

He was seen by John in Apocalyptic vision, as he 
gazed on the magnificent diorama of the past, the pres- 
ent, and the future. 

Angels were present, and saw him rise. They after- 
ward witness and publish his ascension, and predict his 
reascension to judge the world. And, as they were 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



216 



careful to leave their testimony with men on both occa- 
sions by audible communication, it could have been for 
no other purpose but for us to make use of it, as in this 
argument. 

The apostles go forth, and everywhere publish the 
story of his resurrection ; and, in doing so, they do not 
seek a barbarous and uncultivated people, the sure resort 
of deceivers and pretenders, but they carry the tidings 
of their crucified and risen Master into the center of 
victorious Greece and triumphant Eome 1 Thousands, 
including the polished Greek and haughty Roman, are 
persuaded of its truth, and converted to God. The Holy 
Ghost descends in visible form upon the day of Pentecost. 
The vision of the audience of crowding thousands is 
dazzled by heavenly effulgence. The gift of tongues is 
granted, and the polyglotic crovv^d, in the mingled accents 
of not less than seventeen different dialects, publish the 
wonderful works of God 1 The lame leap, the dumb 
sing, the living die, and the dead rise — and, by every 
variety of miraculous display, we have confirmed to us 
the grand pledge of the world's redemption in the tri- 
umphant rising of the Son of God from the darkness of 
the tomb ! 

But it is objected by the oppugners of the fact and 
doctrine of our Lord's resurrection : We cannot believe 
the record, however accredited — no array of historical 
verity can command our faith — upon a subject so 
momentous, we cannot believe without occular demonstra- 
tive evidence connected with the senses. 

You mean, not that you cannot, but that you will not, 
believe, if you can help it. To say you cannot believe, 
proves you ignorant of all the fundamental principles of 
human belief, and especially, as connected w^ith the laws 
of moral demonstration and historical credibility. You 



216 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



have, for example, no occular and, in your sense, de- 
monstrative evidence of the existence and deeds of such 
men as Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal, and Charlemagne, 
and never can have any. If you believe at all, it must 
be upon the basis of precisely the kind of evidence by 
which we prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

You have no occular demonstrative evidence that our 
ancestors were of European origin—that there ever 
existed such cities as Ninevah, Babylon, Jerusalem, and 
Rome ; nor can you ever have any. And yet no sane 
person affects to doubt either, unless, perhaps, a disciple 
of Hume or Berkeley (with whom doubting is reduced to 
a science, and taught as an art), who afifects to doubt 
every thing, even his own existence — who has doubted 
himself into the belief that the Alps are a train of 

ideas," and a thunder-storm but excited sensations." 
And who, to be consistent, must of necessity doubt the 
correctness of his own doubting theory, and the ultima- 
tum of whose philosophical certainty is, that our puzzled 
philosopher is really in doubt, finally, whether he has 
ever doubted at all or not, or whether there even be 
such a thing as doubt — which, after all, he sets down as 
doubtful ! 

In further reply to the exceptions of Infidelity, we 
remark, that, in support of the fact under notice, we 
have an accumulation of the most astonishing moral evi- 
dence ever presented in support of any other fact of con- 
temporary date. AYe have the testimony of at least five 
hundred and eighty witnesses, who saw our Lord alive, 
after his resurrection — the most of whom, if not all, 
knew him well before, and many of whom had only been 
separated from him about thirty -six hours. Sixty of 
these were his sworn enemies, as we have seen ; and, 
having been bought up, basely perjured themselves to 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 217 

discredit tlie fact of his rising, whicli they themselves 
had first published to the Avorld. Six of the witnesses — 
at least four — were from Heaven ; and the remaining 
number were, with perhaps a few exceptions, his friends, 
and in his interest upon earth. 

This vast mass of circumstantial and positive evidence, 
has come down to us in due historical form, and is fairly 
entitled to the undivided suffrage of the human under- 
standing. 

Add to this, that, to give every opportunity to his 
friends and enemies, our Lord deferred the destruction 
of Jerusalem, the scene of his triumph, for forty years 
after his resurrection. Had the destruction of Jerusalem 
succeeded the ascension of the Savior immediately. Infi- 
delity would have pleaded, that war, blood-shed, and 
revolution — the sack of the city, and pillage of the 
country — earthquake, ravage, and conflagration — rend- 
ered it impossible for the history of the times — including 
especially the great event in question — to be written and 
preserved ; and such an objection must have been felt. 
But, fortunately, we have no such objection to meet. 
Jerusalem stood in comparative peace and quiet for 
nearly half a century, and during this time the question 
of our Lord's resurrection came before every tribunal in 
the civilized world : was notorious in all Judea — reported 
to the Roman Senate — discussed at Athens and Corinth — =• 
became a recorded fact in history, and all without being 
contradicted by any historian, or other author of an- 
tiquity. The Jewish Rabbis and Pagan Annalists, una- 
ble to disprove, may be fairly considered as admitting 
the fact by the absence of all contradiction and, with a 
few important exceptions, the observance of studied 
silence with regard to the whole matter. 

The general rule here, magnifies the importance of 
10 



218 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



the exceptions. The fact, that Christ rose from the 
dead, is distinctly mentioned by Josephns, as one of ex- 
tensive notoriety and belief. It is expressly admitted, 
too, in the Jewish Talmud, although written expressly 
to discredit the claims of Christianity. And in the Acts 
of Pilate, transmitted to the Roman Senate, it is officially 
reported as matter of common publicity. Soon after, 
Pliny and Tacitus allude to the fact, and Celsus and 
Porphery concede it as historically true ; while by his 
disciples and followers it was published everywhere — in 
the Synagogue, the Temple, the Pretorium — throughout 
Jevfry, Galilee of the nations, and elsev/here. The ban- 
ner of his cross was unfurled, and the trophies of his 
victory displayed upon the very spot where late the mob, 
the tree and the nail, held him to a cursed death. 

The first preachers of Christ and the Cross shrank 
from no investigation or trial of their cause. They flung 
themselves into the arena, and bore themselves gallantly 
in the grand tournament of conflicting creeds and 
nations. They fearlessly confronted themselves with 
Jew and Gentile, Greek and Barbarian. The Galilean, 
the Mede, the Parthian and the Elamite, stood horror- 
struck and confounded before them. Cappadocia, Pontus, 
Bythinia, Asia, Egypt and Pamphylia, bovvcd to the 
burden of their story. The throned opinions of imme- 
morial generations sunk beneath the Divinity of their 
mission. The thunder of their rebuke shook the Acrop- 
olis of Athens, and crumbled the temples of Greece. 
They threw down the seed of eternal life at the feet of 
the Roman Emperors — the jeweled satraps of the East 
trembled upon their thrones of gem and gold ; and, 
when they returned to review their work, they were 
saluted by the Church of God in the saloons of the 
Imperial household and the pavilions of eastern magnifi- 



THE RESUBHECTION OE CHRIST. 



219 



cence, while the effasion of His Spirit covered the 
islands of the sea witli his glory, and regenerated the 
continent by its hallowed, all-pervading influence. 

In a word, Christianity became the great well-head 
of moral discovery and ethical information : and the 
Pulpit, as the theater and symbol of its unrivaled minis- 
trations, then, as now, stood out, not less the throne of 
taste and attraction, than the beacon light of immortal- 
ity to the benighted children of earth and time. 

The doctrine of the resurrection, therefore, is no 
longer a disputed problem. The resurrection of Jesus 
Christ has solved the mystery. The diffidence of hope 
and expectation that prevailed on this subject for ages is 
now overcome, and the clear light of infallible demon- 
stration shines, vvhere the darkness of despair late held 
its scepter and saddened the nations. 

A poet of antiquity had pathetically lamented, that 
sun, moon, and stars sat, but rose ao-ain — that the veo;- 
etable race died in autumn only to revive under the ver- 
nal equinox — but that man, even the best of human 
beings, sank in death to rise no more ! The revelations 
of Christianity, however, show the gloomy dirge of the 
hoary Moschus to have been premature in its touching 
^ament. We have, as v^e have seen, the inescimiable 
assurance, thai, with the believer in Christ, the close of 
life is the dawn of immortality, and death the birthday 
of a new and nobler existence at God's right hand. 

Addressing you, then, as Christians, let the fact and 
doctrine of Christ's resurrection, and the hoijo of your 
own, become the burden of your mission and the inspira- 
tion of your song. Tell his disciples he is risen from 
the dead " ! Tell his disciples ; for to them the tidings 
will be supremely grateful. Tell them ; for they, of all 
others, are entitled to know it. Tell them ; for they 



220 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



alone and at once will understand the story. Tell tliem ; 
for they vfill tell it to others. Let it be told to others ; 
for these in turn will become his disciples too. Minis- 
ters and disciples of Christ ! tell it to all ! Ever and 
aggressively break the repose of earth's dull ear, and 
pass the rapturous acclaim to the nations — He is 
risen ! 

II. In giving the sequel of the argument, it remains, 

THAT WE ASK ATTENTION TO THE PURPOSES AND ReSULTS OF 

THE Resurrection of Christ ; or that, with the fact, 

WE CONNECT THE DOCTRINE OF HIS RESURRECTION. HoW 

the resurrection of Christ connects with the interests of 
practical Christianity, must be obvious to every well- 
informed believer in its truth. Alludinf^ to the resur- 
rection of Christ and its concomitant results, St. Peter 
says, ^'And we are his witnesses of these things, and so 
also is the Holy Ghost, whom God hath given to them 
that obey him." This co- witnessing agency of the Holy 
Spirit in every true believer in Christ, with regard to the 
fact and purposes of his resurrection, is a much neglect- 
ed but most important view of the subject, and furnishes 
sufficient warrant for the aspects in which we shall have 
occasion to present it. 

With regard to the first part of our subject, the learn- 
ed and candid Grotius remarks, in a letter to the cele- 
brated Bigonius, after a most careful and patient exam- 
ination of the evidence in support of Christ's resurrec- 
tion, ISTo one can withstand the credibility of so many 
and so great testimonies.'' And, admitting the fact, who 
can fail to perceive the great practical importance of this 
most momentous verity, in the creed of the Christian. 

The bold and eloquent Luther, descanting upon the 
words of our text, says, The words, Christ is risen from 
the deady should be everywhere inscribed in such large 



THE RESUBRECTION OF CHRIST. 



221 



characters, that we should be unable to see anything 
else, not even Heaven and earth." 

With what distinctive preeminence especially does the 
doctrine of Christ's resurrection stand out in the writings 
of the Apostles, and how truly ought it to be the great 
theme of the Christian teacher everywhere, whether ''in 
climes that burn with fierce, or freeze with distant, suns," 
instead of the but too common contention about creed, 
form and ritual, with the getting up and blazonry of 
which. Heaven has had much less to do than man. 

Would we could suitably impress you with the high 
moral bearing of our subject. Take any number of facts 
you may, a thousand or less, coming to us athwart the 
wide waste of receding centuries, and what one reaches 
us so attested and exerting such an influence as the 
resurrection of Christ ! What other event has crowded 
the mighty vista of the future with such sublime and 
stirring hopes, uplifting us from the degradation of sin 
and sorrow, and teaching us to aspire after sonship with 
God and intercourse with angels ! 

If Christ had not risen as truly as he died, the failure 
would have been the orphanage of hope and the bank- 
ruptcy of our being, in view of all the lofty issues and 
eternal destinies of the one and the other ! K'ow, how- 
ever, in preaching ''Christ crucified/' we point to the 
risen Savior. The antecedent truth implies the sequent 
verity ; for, in the language of Heaven, furnished us by 
the fino'er of God, "Christ both died, and rose, and re- 
vived, that he might be Lord both of the living and the 
dead." 

Infinitely important, therefore, are the purposes and 
results of his resurrection. We turn suddenly from the 
dark back-ground of the picture — the garden, the cross 
and the grave — to gaze upon the coronation splendor of 



222 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



tlie Prince of Life. When the dawn of morning broke 
upon the night-watch of the disciples, they felt that the 
whole heaven of their hopes was in ruins, and that the 
sepulcher of their Master was the grave of immortality ! 
An hour after, they see the banner of life waving tri- 
umphant above the citadel of death ! 

Stupendous event 1 Then our nature took wing, in fact 
as well as prospect, and mounted with him from the 
tomb ! Faith is triumphant in the retrospect, and the 
future spreads out before the eye a gay and happy scene. 
When, as the great Captain of our salvation,'^ the suf- 
fering Son of God had met and satisfied the last demand 
of justice— had entered, as our surety, the dark domin- 
ion of the dead — had rendered grateful the retreat of the 
tomb — had perfumed the grave for the believer, and 
planted the flower of Heaven's eternal spring in the moss 
of the sepulcher — then, then he rose, in spoilful grand- 
eur, over the wreck of death's proudest hopes, and, in 
Godlike triumph, dragged to his ascending car the cap- 
tivity of a dying world ! 

The resurrection of Christ proves and publishes the truth 
and importance of the religion he came to teach. His resur- 
rection is the accomplishment of ancient prophecy — the 
fulfillment of the promise made to the Fathers, as well as 
the accomplishment of his own predictions on the same 
subject — in all which, his resurrection is made the test 
of the truth and Divinity of his mission. The fact, there- 
fore, that he did rise from the dead, demonstrates, in a 
manner the most luminous and irrefutable, the Divine 
original of the religion he came to teach, and its truth is 
thus clearly and triumphantly authenticated by the pub- 
lic seal of Omniscience itself. 

More than a thousand years before the death of Christ, 
prophecy had assured us, that, although he should fall 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



223 



by the stroke of death, he should not remain in the grave 
nor his flesh see corruption. If, then, our Lord had not 
risen, agreeably to the testimony of prophets and his 
own predictions to the same effect, the high pretensions 
of revealed religion would have been disproved in the 
face of day, and her numerous oracles struck dumb for- 
ever. But the fact that he did rise, gives the impress 
of Divinity and certainty to the w^hole history of human 
redemption ; and the problem of the immortality of our 
nature is thus reduced to an axiom by this crowning 
proof of the mission and Messiahship of the Son of God. 
For, without his resurrection, the credentials alike of the 
one and the other would have been incomplete ; and, with 
such insufficient warrant, the bare pretense had been the 
ridicule of ages ! 

Tlie resurrection of Christ accredits his claim to the faith 
and oheciience of the nations. Ancient prophecy had an- 
nounced him King in Sion and Ruler of his people Isra- 
el. But the ultimate substantiation of this claim stood 
intimately connected with his resurrection,-and without 
it w^ould have "been void. Rising from the dead, how- 
ever, as the divinely accredited Head and Leader of 
God's people, his claim to their submission and obedi- 
ence admitted of no dispute, no uncertainty. His regal 
establishment upon the hill of Sion, his public and 
princely coronation upon the throne of David and over 
the house of Jacob, precluded forever all rational ground 
of doubt .or disobedience. 

Meanwhile it must not be forgotten, but borne in mind 
at every step, that, had our Lord not risen from the 
dead, the accursed ravings of the crucifixion would have 
been the motto of unbelieving millions in all coming 
time, ''He saved others, himself he could not save/^ 
Infidelity would have said, not ''If thou be the Son of 



224 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 

God, come down from the cross," but, If thou be tbe 
Son of God," come up from the grave and we will be- 
lieve in thee." His resurrection, however, closed the 
mouth of unbelief and sealed the lips of hell, and both 
are made reluctantly to confess, Truly, this was the 
Son of God ;" and by how far this is now certain, ours 
has been, in his rejection, a most sad and damning di- 
vergence from truth and duty. 

His resurrection removed forever all idea of shame and 
scandal, defeat and overthrow^ connected ivith the Cross, 
The ignominy of crucifixion and the gibbet is last in the 
conception of simple suffering and expiation, and the 
stain of his humiliation is effaced in the triumph by which 
it was succeeded. 

Obscure, indeed, was his life, unparalleled his suffer- 
ings, and most extraordinary 'Hhe decease he accom- 
plished at Jerusalem :" yet all this no longer shocks the 
mind of the humble, ingenuous inquirer after God and 
virtue. We connect the fact of his becoming poor with 
the more impressive and important fact of his poverty 
issuing in the riches of many. We lose sight of him, 
stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, to contemplate -the 
effulgent, the transcendent, display of his glory that fol- 
lowed. Regarding him only as the great Restorer of 
the hopes and Deliverer of the souls of men, the Cross 
of his humiliation, on which he bowed his head in 
achievement of the world's redemption, is, in the eyes 
of the admiring millions brought under its influence, 
converted into a throne of glory. 

On the Friday of the Passover we see him agonizingv 
bleeding and dying, imcheered by his friends and insult- 
ed by his foes. The next Sabbath morning we behold 
him risen, beatified and triumphant ! Look at the mag- 
nificent variety of pomp, circumstance and wonder, un- 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 225 

der which he sprang from the lap of corruption to glory, 
honor and immortality ! Death obtained a temporary 
triumph, it is true, but was soon victoriously foiled, 
and, upon the point of his own arrow, doomed to die. 
And the almighty Conqueror, having placed his foot up- 
on the neck of the king of terrors, and everywhere sub- 
verted the empire of the grave, cries to his followers, 
the dead and the dying, I am the resurrection and the 
life and soon — looking at ages in the light of eternity — 
soon ten thousand thousand tongues, from their myriad 
graves, in earth or ocean, shall echo back the strain, 
and hail with heavenly transport the author and the 
deed ! 

His resurrection furnished evidence of his elevation and 
investiture, as Ruler and Judge, connected with the nature^ 
design and grandeur, of his mission. In his new character 
of Mediator, he was appointed to sustain the empire of 
the world and wield the burden of its vast concerns. His 
scepter, by special compact as well as original right, 
comprehended the worlds of Nature, Providence and 
Grace, and the boon or bounty of either is to be received 
as his executive gift. 

In whatever sense he may have been *'born King of 
the Jews and Ruler of his people Israel," the verification 
of such claim carried with it the implication of his resur- 
rection, as essential to his high inauguration to the moral 
lieutenancy of the universe — the mediatorial sovereignty 
of Heaven and earth. And hence the day on which he 
rose from the dead was eminently the birth-day of that 
memorable enthronization which constituted him ''King 
of kings and Lord of lords." 

It was then he was clothed Avith the ensigns of heaven- 
iy royalty and assumed the helm of universal empire. 
Of sin, death and hell, he had already made fearful 



226 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



spoil upon the Cross, and now lie leads them captive. 
He had lately entered their territory as an invader, and 
now he bears oii their chains and fetters in triumph to 
Heaven, there to reign until, planting the banner of his 
Cross upon the tower of conquest, he shall give the world 
to goodness and to God. 

It teas reserved for the resurreciio/i of Christ, to assert 
the efficacy and completion of his atonement and sacrifice. 
These were made by his death ; yet, had he not risen 
from the dead, the world would have been without evi- 
dence that such atonement and sacrifice had been made 
at all. The death of Christ, in ancient prophecy, not 
less than type and shadow, as we have seen, expressly 
anticipated his resurrection as the pledge and proof of 
the suitableness and sufficiency of his atonement for all 
the purposes of human recovery. And the resurrection 
of Christ is uniformly predicated of his death, in proof 
that it was an atonement for the sins of men. While, 
therefore, the death of Christ filled up the measure of 
atonement, the resurrection of Christ proclaims its efficacy 
and completion. 

By Divine purpose and appointment, the incarnation, 
life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, all 
occur in established connection as antecedent and se- 
quent. Hence, the high and benevolent offices of Advo- 
cate, Ruler and Judge, and the eventful executive trans- 
actions engaging his attention, since the gates of the 
Heaven he had left v^ere thrown wide to receive him as 
God's returning Son and man's triumphant Savior, all 
connect directly with his resurrection, and, without it, 
would be but inconsequent and unaccredited assumptions. 
His resurrection was the seal of his Mediatorship, and 
crowned him Lord of all. 

The resurrection of Christ renders certoAn and infalli 



THE UESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



227 



hie the hope and prosvect of our oion resurrection. That 
between Clirist's resurrection and our own, as cause and 
effect, there is a necessary established connection, is a 
position everywhere plain and jDatent upon the face of 
Revelation. This is exclusively a doctrine of the Bible — 
is pure matter of Revelation, and is only found and 
cherished in the creed of the Christian. ''Begotten 
again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead." '' Christ risen is the first fruits 
of them that slept." ''First Christ and then those that 
are his at his coming." "If the spirit of him that 
raised up Jesus from the dead dv>^ell in you, he that 
raised up Jesus shall likewise quicken your mortal 
bodies by his spirit that dwelleth in you." "He that 
raised up Jesus-shall raise us up also by Jesus." " Christ 
hath abolished death." ''By man" — the man Christ 
Jesus — "came also the resurrection of the dead." 
Christ is expressly said to be the " Savior of the body," 
which could not be without its resurrection. 

Some further explanation may help us to a better 
understandino^ of the subject. We are members of 
Christ's mystical body, and we are such as embodied 
intellio^ences vrith all the substantial elements of human- 

o 

ity, and, surely, no part of that body, including the 
material not less than immaterial, can be lost in the 
gloom, the oblivion of the sepulcher. 

In the case of those who believe, he saves human 
nature entire, as a generic imiversality, compounded of 
soul and body. The body is as essentially a constituent 
part of human nature as the soul, and is not less funda- 
mentally connected with its identity and perfection. 
Man is composed of the only known substances in the 
universe— '-matter and spirit ; and Heaven saves him, if at 
all, in the complex physiology of nature, in which he 



2£8 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



was created, and stands out the mysterious type of uni- 
versal being. Hence the redemption of the body is 
necessary to man's salvation ; and without it, his being 
is wrecked and, at best, but one-half saved, while the 
other is lost. God-dishonoring thought ! — may you put 
it far from you 1 

Our bodies, further, are temples of the Holy Ghost,'' 
and were purchased by the blood of Christ ; and it is, 
therefore, declared by the whole analogy of faith, that 
they will not, cannot, remain in the grave forever. The 
original inhabitant and proprietor — the spirit of God — 
will, in their promised reedification, restore them from 
the tomb ; and, with our bodies thus restored, we shall 
be constituted pillars in the great, the imperishable, tem- 
ple of eternity, *Ho go out no more." 

To demonstrate the connection between the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, as the ordained determining cause, and 
ours, as one of the magnificent results flowing from it, 
many of the saints that had sunk into the slumber of 
their long and last repose, when he rose sprang into life 
with him, fresh in all the morning vigor of immortality. 
Lazarus and others were restored from the grave and 
bier, under the new dispensation. Enoch and Elijah 
were translated under the old, and at least two or three 
restored from death, all going to show that the human 
body is destined to survive the grave. And to remove 
all uncertainty, and everything like doubt, on the subject 
of its practicability and the Divine purpose to this effect, 
we see our Lord, in the sight of chosen witnesses, 
breaking the seal of death, and triumphantly vindicating 
the imperishableness of humanity, in its reintegration 
from the ruins of the grave ! The promise of God 
stands fair and sure, and broadly pledged ; and the 
grave, under his control, has already ripened a part of 



THE resurrection: of CHRIST. 



229 



tlie vast vintage to show that the rest shall be done in 
its proper time, when the great Head of the Church 
shall see fit to reap the harvest of the earth and gather 
in the vintage of the world. 

Our revivescence, therefore, from the sleep of the 
sepulcher — the glory of our reproduced bodies in the 
resurrection — is not *'the hope of worms," as alleged 
by the aspirer after philosophic fame and sway, in the 
schools of pagan and infidel morality, but the well- 
accredited hope of reanimation, in immortal bodies, be- 
yond the grave and above decay. We died in the first 
Adam — we live in the second ; we sunk with the earth- 
ly — we rise with the heavenly. Christ's resurrection is 
the pledge, the proof and the pattern, of ours. He 
rose, representatively, as a specimen of renovated hu- 
manity, and we rise in the regular process of moral 
causation — once children of mortality and tenants of the 
tomb, but now promoted to the birth-right of an inher- 
itance imperishable in the Heavens — interminable as 
the being of God. 

Such a train of reflection, however, by the law of 
contrast, compels us to pause and throw ourselves upon 
a very diff'erent scene. How unutterably WTetched must 
be the condition of those not interested in the resurrec- 
tion of the just ! They reveled or slumbered in crime 
upon earth — they die without hope, and sink to the hell 
they thought it not w^orth while to fear or shun, only to 
find its angry billows surging about them in deep and 
undying murmurs forever ! Hell ! appalling, fearful 
term ! Typing reality still more fearful 1 Although wc 
find its synonym and ideal prototype in every language the 
world has ever known, what sign or utterance, so much 
abused, so little understood ! As used by the scojBfing lev- 
ity or blasphemous irreverence of man, it may mean any- 



230 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



thing or nothing ; but reaching us, as it does, fi'om the lips 
of Heaven and the finger of God, with meaning all its 
own, what word in earth's or other vocabulary, was ever 
in travail with such dread significance ! Y/ould we could 
give you some idea of the appalling attractions of the hell 
we depict ! Yv^ould that, for a moment, and a moment 
only, vre could dip our tongue in the gall and barb it 
with the anguish of celestial bitterness, as we point your 
downward gaze to its deep and vexed abyss, without bank 
or bottom, and where, on every side, avenging destiny 
rolls its adverse tides against the unresting damned, not to 
amend or destroy, but only to meet and break, and roar 
and rise ! JSTo help for the helpless — no hope for the 
lost ! 

But, we have other and more grateful reflections for 
you. Are you Christians ? Blush nat at the high avow- 
al — it is the highest style of man ; and, to the taunt or 
sneer of infidel indifference, let a life of piety reply, by 
pointing to the splendor breaking upon you as, arrayed 
in the similitude of God, you take your seats and rank 
in heaven ! 

het the suhject v'e have discussed^ reconcile you to the, 
afflictions of life, however numerous, however depressing. 
Amid them all, your world is strictly within your- 
selves, and its openings look out on immortality. Amid 
the vexations and disquieting scenes of your earthly toil, 
say to the Bedeemer, my God, my life, my way ! And, 
amid all the blendings of good and evil here on earth, 
forget not the stay of your hopes and the song of your 
pilgrimage — I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 
This thought will illume the darkness without and hal- 
low all within. 

Let this suhject reconcile you to the aff roach of death, 
whether it be sooner or later. As Christians, you should 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



SSI- 



fear no mode of death — -no place of sepiilclier ; for, in 
the prospect before joii, hfe renev\'ed springs kindling 
from decay. Forget not that death himself shall die, 
and the giant corpse of time lie buried in the grave of 
years, when yon have just begun to live, and that the birth- 
shout of your riy^v'^ -hall be the dirge of their doom — 
the knell of th -\ .'ced reign ; and that the only im- 
mortality of time and death, shall be that conferred by 
you in dying at their hands, only to survive them both ! 
Live, then, greeting life as God may give it, and yet 
awaitino' death when he shall send it. 

Leo this subject reconcile you to your long confinement in 
the tomb. Christianity knocks at the gate of the grave 
and asks back her dead. The grave is our debtor, and 
Heaven will coerce payment. It is the treasury of 
Heaven for the preservation and reproduction of the 
human body. Long, solitary and undisturbed, may be 
the slumber, but when the trumpet of eternity shall 
pour its thrilling thunder into the deaf, cold ear of the 
sepulcher, your God-created forms shall spring to life 
immortal and renewed, and this body, that in which I 
speak and you hear, constructed by the hand of God 
upon a model suggested by his wisdom, shall lift aloft 
its changeful form, and soar and shine another and the 
same." 

Recollect, too. ice sink in death, in the sure and certain 
'pros'pect of a joyful resurrection, when our bodies shall be 
raised, re-molded and rendered immortal in the king- 
dom of God. When our glorified humanrcy shall 
receive the abiding impress of the seal of Heaven, 
and be decked with every beauty and every splendor 
befitting the heir of an immortal crovm — the tenant 
of eternal mansions and celestial scenery, every where 
mapping to the eye, in living myrioramic picture, 



232 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



the combined magnificence of all tlie worlds of 
God. 

We cannot close tcilhoui asking you io reflect upon 
the bliss attendant upon this final renovation of our 
nature^ in the kingdom and habitations of the blest, 
Christains 1 this is a thought that swallows up mortality 
and bids defiance to the grave. It is perfect immunity 
from all evil — the actual fruition of all good. It is to be 
insphered in realms of light and life — empalaced in the 
mansions of heavenly beatitude. It is the perfection 
and perpetuity of bliss, where God is, all in all, pouring 
the light of salvation, and the radiance of eternity, upon 
the millions of his chosen. 

But, in describing the heavenly state — the celestial world 
of light and life — thought, language and images all fail us. 
It is a theme too high for conception, too grand for de- 
scription, too sacred — too ineffably sacred — to admit of 
comparison. The grandeur of ix«itaf e and the glory of art, 
the dreams of fancy and the creations of poetry, all fade 
in the vision. Admiration no longer hovers over the 
elysian fields of Virgil. Homer's sparkling rills of 
nectar, streaming from the gods, woo our thirst no more. 
The bright Blandusian fountain, and the magnificent 
vale of far-famed Cashmere, lose their splendor. Even 
the paradise of Milton, with its trees and its rivers, its 
fruits and its flowers, its hymns and its harps — a living 
landscape with its vernal diadem and voiced wdth 
melody — dwindles into sterility ! And, until we die to 
share the ripened powers of immortality and heir the 
thrones of Heaven, we can only say, that interminable 
spring shall bloom upon the scene and chase the winter 
of affliction by its smiles ! We feel how utterly language 
sinks beneath the majesty of the subject — but let the in- 
firmity be eloquent of its praise ; for who can sustain 



THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 



233 



himself when every thought bends and breaks with the 
burden of its own meaning ! 

We would, but cannot, tell you of the place to which 
we go — the home of our Father — the residence of his 
-family — the central abode of final virtue. The august 
vision makes us tremble as we gaze, and the sublimest 
reach of human thought can only point, feebly point, to 
its deep foundations and God built stories — its rainbow 
coverings and sunlike splendors — walled with adamant 
and paved with sapphire — crowded with the redeemed, 
and God in the midst. The high circuit of eternity, the 
scene of improvement, and the boundless roll of ages— 
the only key to the evolution of its wonders ! 



10» 



234 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



SERMON VIII. 

THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

"Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the 
world." — John i, 29. 

When the great prophet of repentance, the immediate 
harbinger of Messiah, found himself, at the ford of Jor- 
dan and elsewhere, surrounded by a crowd of anxious 
immortals, he contented himself, on more occasions than 
one, regarding it as the sum of his vocation, to point 
them to the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of 
the world and, under whatever circumstances of dis- 
tance and disadvantage, relying upon Divine aid, we 
humbly essay to imitate his example. 

The human mind is ever and restlessly breaking loose 
from the present and the perishable about it, and grasping 
after something in the distance ; thus attesting its own 
dignity, and furnishing prophetic assurance of its intend- 
ed destiny. 

Search after happiness, is the great law of human life. 
Any attempt, therefore, to present you with a cup, in 
which disappointment and death can mingle no new 
anguish for the future, must, at least, be regarded as 
laudable ; and may we not assume, that there is no 
man, bowing to the humiliation of his lot on earth, 
who will not find reasons, stronger than all contradic- 
tion, to defer to every such inquiry with at least honest 
solicitude. 

It is not more certain, that intelligence controls the 
order of the universe, than that Christianity, with 
its principles and relations, is, beyond all others, the 
religion of research. If, then, we would be religious 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



235 



to any purpose, in yiew of the Christian system, we 
must inform ourselves on the subject, both as it regards 
faith and ethics — what we are to beheve, and what 
do. 

And, further, if it be in any sense true, that the riches 
of eternity alone can ennoble the poverty of time and 
indemnify suffering humanity against the evils of earth ; 
then it will follow, that every topic connected with the 
lofty theme of human hope and human destiny, becomes 
at once a question not less of practice than of faith — 
requiring us to do, as well as believe. 

Hence the subject on which we address you, although 
common and familiar in the pulpit, is an infinitely mo- 
mentous one, because it furnishes the only adequate, the 
only impulsive, elements and motives of Christian char= 
acter and conduct. And, after all that can be said of 
opinions, parties and rituals, a good life is the essential 
staple of Messiah's kingdom as found on earth, and 
should be mainly insisted upon by all his ministers in all 
their ministrations. 

And we are thus led to the conclusion, that, viewing 
man as a child of transgression, an alien from God and 
virtue, inheriting the curses and the issues of crime — 
and all men as occupying the same level of helplessness 
and destitution — there is no question in the wide range 
of human inquiry so vitally connected with the best 
interests of his being, as that which reveals the method 
of his recovery and accredits his hopes of immor- 
tality. 

Christianity is not, as but too many have vaguely 
supposed, a mere cabinet of curious and unimportant 
mysteries — an abstract drtimatic exhibition of the mystic 
and the marvelous. All its facts, doctrines and duties, 
point to the Cross of our redemption, and publish, in lines 



236 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AJSD SOUGHT, 



of light and with heavenly, heart-moving urgency. 
Behold the Lamb of God 1" 

It is one of the peculiarities of our religion, essen- 
tially identified with the history and the hopes of Christi- 
anity, however inconsequent and out of place it may 
seem in the eye of worldly wisdom, that we look for 
redemption from one who was crucified, and expect 
immortality at the hands of him who was once overcome 
by death, but who is now armed with the power of a con- 
queror and covered with the glory of triumph, without 
limit and without end — wielding with unchallenged su- 
premacy the scepter of dominion over death and hell. 

And can such truths fail to attract ? Is it possible 
we can fail of an audience, an attentive hearing from 
you — from anj, the most indiflferent even among you — - 
when we ask you to behold the most illustrious person- 
age, and contemplate the most interesting character m 
the whole range of b^ing, intelligence and action ? 
When we ask you to behold the Son of God — the world's 
deliverer — in his person, his advent, his offices, his 
actions, his sufferings, his death, and his love — embarked 
upon the mission of human redemption, and working out 
its fulfillment by means heightening even the grandeur 
of the end ? 

If the dignity of his person as God, the line of his 
ancestry as man, the mystery of his incarnation as both — 
the glory of his offices, the luster of his actions, the 
extremity of his sufferings, the merit of his death, and 
the miracles of his love — do not arrest your attention 
and induce you to behold him, in the language of the 
text, then, indeed, so far as you are concerned, has our 
ministry failed ; but we vindicate our mission by remind- 
ing you, that the cause of such failure must be referred, 
for final adjustment, to the fearful disclosures of the 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



237 



coming judgment — the weiglity retributions of the 
everlasting future. 

Aiming less at direct formal argumentation, than 
practical statement and the necessary inferences, we 
shall avail ourselves of the former only in the propor- 
tion the latter may render it necessary ; and, while we 
are reminded on the one hand, that, by such a method, 
truth may not be the less vulnerable to assault, we shall 
not forget, on the other, that it is always possible for a 
fault-finder to question a position, or cavil at a sentence^ 
without having succeeded in the overthrow of a principle^ 
or the invalidation of an aro-ument. 

The views we propose, have been derived from the 
Bible ; and, as we believe, upon the plainest and sound- 
est principles of allowable exegesis ; but, if inconclu- 
sively, certainly with no more intention to deceive 
others than wish or willingness to be deceived ourselves. 
We are pleading the cause of no human creed, nor do 
we ask the protection of any. We do not invoke the 
sanction, nor would we give a cypher for the indorse- 
ment, of a party. 

We are not sitting in assize upon dissentient creeds 
and denominations. We say nothing of Trinitarian or 
Unitarian, as the signal terms of sect and party, dividing 
upon this question. So viewed, both are of human 
origin ; and Ave are not here as the advocate or judge of 
either. To God, they stand or fall. The one frequently 
appears as flippantly familiar with the mysterious unity 
and tri -personality of the God of Revelation, as with the 
nature and properties of a triangle ; and the other dis- 
sects the character of Jesus Christ as irreverently, and 
with as little ceremony, as that of Socrates or Confucius. 
We do not battle for mere signs and terms. We return 
to the Bible. 



238 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



That we may suitably and availably behold the Lamb 
of God, it is necessary that we notice him, as do the 
Scriptures, so as to include and classify his most impor- 
tant claims and relations. Especially, I. With refer- 
ence TO HIMSELF : II. WiTH REFERENCE TO THE NATURE 
AND TERMS OF HIS RELIGION III. In VIEW OF HUMAN CON- 
DITION : lY. Human character : And, finally, in view 

OF REASONS AND INCENTIVES CONNTICTED WITH ACTION THE 

doctrine of MOTIVE AND ENCOURAGEMENT. And, 

1. We call YOUR ATTENTION TO THE SoN OF GoD, IN 
HIS PERSONAL AND RELATIVE ASPECTS, AS OUR GoD AND 

Savior. Behold him, then, as he exists in himself — in 
his original and preexistent state — in the bosom, and 
possessing the glory of his Father — reigning resplen- 
dently in the pavilion of his own residence, and in the 
multitude and succession of his goings-forth, everywhere 
ministering to the gladness of his creation and the glory 
of the universe. 

In this view of him, our convictions assure us we can- 
not be mistaken. The testimony of God has legibly in- 
scribed on his signet, '^King of kings — Lord of lords 
'^Jehovah sent by Jehovah to the nations and all the 
evidence we have is to the same effect. The journal of 
creation, the volumes of Providence, the records of re- 
demption, all unfold the dignity of his person not less 
than the wonders of his love. 

Would you behold him, then, as he should be beheld, 
you must consu.lt the record of his titles, the history of 
his deeds and doings ; you must read and ponder well, 
as the evidence of his claims, the annals of his own riofht 
hand and outstretched arm. Before you consider him 
as visiting earth ujDon the errand of human redemption, 
you must contemplate him enthroned from everlasting 
in supreme grandeur in the heavenly places : you must 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



239 



look to liiin as creation's author and end — the sum and 
the soul of life, light and enjoyment — in Trhom we live, 
move and have our being : his presence pervading and sur- 
rounding all, and his energy, directly or remotely, giving 
birth to every motion and every action. Vie speak here, 
however, of the abstract properties of being and action, 
and not the moral aspects in which they are fotmd to ex- 
ist, in the instance of volimtary moral agents. 

We look upon Jesus Christ as the God of n attire, 
providence and grace, and award to him che preeminence 
of moral dignity beyond limit and without comparison — 
regarding his preexistence as uncommenced, and, of 
course, ascribing to him the self-sufficiency and majesty 
of Godhead, in all their oi-andeur and indenendence. 
We look to him as producing the amplitude, wielding 
the energies, and controlling the fortunes, of creation — 
creation not only in its boundless amplitude, but in all 
its minuter details. He grasps universal nature in his 
single hand. He weighs the world's foundations. Above, 
about, beneath, his workmanship includes and incloses 
all. If we turn to the burning fountains of the sun, or 
look at those immortal lights that live along the sky 
and nightly adorn the hill of Heaven — He kindled 
them ! 

If vre descend to earth, it is to find it robed in beauty 
and rich in bounty. Here he penciled the flower, stain- 
ed the blade, decked the plumage, veined the onyx and 
streaked the zebra ; while the vast universality of things, 
the boundless congress of nature's nameless varieties, all 
received from him their moldings, their carvings and their 
colorings. 

^^'or should these claims be accorded him in the vague 
generalities or more precise registers of our faith mere- 
ly, but the weighty, the momentous truth, should be 



240 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



wrought into and receive amplification iii.all the manuals 
and exercises of our devotion. We should think and 
feel, as well as say and assume. How prone are Chris- 
tians to conceive of Jesus Christ as a limited, local being, 
and of his administration as provincial and temporary, 
instead of regarding him as the center of the great moral 
system, himself the end and reason of all he says or 
does, requires or forbids. As truth allows, so duty re- 
quires, that all our conceptions of Deity apply to him. 
For, to use the words of St. Paul, alchemizing and con- 
centrating the strength of all language in a single sen- 
tence, '^He is all in all'^ And beyond this assumed 
universality of being, this grand totality of supreme ex- 
cellence, Heaven could say no more ; or, saying more, 
had not been understood by earth. 

How truly is he the supreme, approach! ess source and 
cause of all that's great and good! His essence is 
everywhere ; and yet space and place do not terminate 
that essence. He is above the heavens and beneath the 
earth ; and yet high and low, distant and near, bear no 
relation to him. He penetrates all substances, but is 
mixed with none. He is here and elsewhere, with the 
same concentration of energy. He comprehends without 
succession of thought : he wills without the intervention 
of variant motives : he knows without learning : he feels 
without passion : he loves without partiality : is angry 
without rage : hates without revenge, and repents with- 
out change. Time with him has no succession. The 
past is not gone, the future is not to come, nor does the 
present connect the two. ''I Am," dials his relation to 
each. And thus, claiming the signature of absolute ex- 
istence, an eternal now — the exclusive property of God- 
head — forever lasts with him. 

In fixing his eye upon eternity's long and boundless 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AXD SOUGHT. 241 



calendar, one day and a tliousand }'ears are the same. 
Duration, in all its overwlielming calculations, is vritli 
him a simple unit — a period one and indivisible ! And 
thus beheld by faith, he is pervadingly present wherever 
the orbs of creation or the islands of lioht float throuo^h 
the universe ; m.arshaling suns and systems without name 
or number, filling with life and gilding with light, myri- 
ads of worlds, untraveled by the wing of seraphim, un- 
visited hj the thought of man ! 

His infinite being, therefore, blessing and bounty, 
should always engage and engross our attention, affec- 
tion and gratitude— our confidence, our hopes and our 
fears. And whenever the inquirer shall approach our 
altars, as here and now, let the inscription there publish 
our estimate of the Lamb of God, Him first, Him last, 
Him midst and without end God with us so fear- 
ful and yet so kind, so invisible and yet how manifest ! 
Such is the Lamb of Atonement — the great Christian 
propitiation — and in this way we point you to a Rod: 
able to bear up the burden of a foundered world ! 

Behold him made flesh, dicelling a mong men and claim- 
ing earth his home. How yast the condescension ; how 
august his loveliness ; how majestic the humiliation dis- 
played in this event ! The glory of Heaven and the 
virtue of earth — the grandeur of eternity and the worth 
of time — all unite in his person. Goodness and benefi- 
cence mark his life, and the path of his humanity is 
everywhere strewn with the evidences of his Godhead 1 
Pre-announced by signs and wonders, a concert of angels, 
lining field and firmament, celebrate his birth ! A voice 
from ''the excellent glory" — a yoice whose thunder- 
tones had not been heard on earth for ages long— sig- 
nalized his baptism at the Jordan ! Tables in the desert, 
spread for the accommodation of hunger-stricken thou- 
11 



242 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



sands, are covered witli bread and fish of his own crea- 
tion ! Vegetation yields to the power of his word ! 
Health and sickness obey his voice ! Tempest, wind 
and tide, take their orders from him ; even the billowy 
nj)roar of storm-tossed Galilee became silent at his 
presence, bowed and retired ! At his approach death 
and the grave dropped their chains and let go their 
prey ! The brokers of the temple fled at the shaking of 
his scourge ! Devils, terrified at his rebuke, left their 
possessions to the reign of reason, religion and truth ! 
Principalities and powers felt the vengeance' of his cross, 
while rocks and hills and graves published the grandeur 
of his person ! 

We see the line of his ancestry spread out from the 
Garden— the Eden of man's innocence — to Bethlehem, 
the mother-city of the tribe of Judah and house of David. 
It stretches from Adam to Abraham, from Abraham to 
Judah, from Judah to David, and from David to Joseph. 
Of his deity, as God manifest in the flesh,'' we have, 
perhaps, already said enough. The vast valley of vision 
is everywhere filled with the monuments of his glory, 
and the pages of God's testimony burn, and glow, and 
blaze, with the demonstrations of his uncreated excel- 
lence. 

In view of all which, he becomes our better represen- 
tative, the Heavenly Adam, from whom we derive a 
more ennobling inheritance. In a time of infinite need 
he put forth his hand to break our fall and afterward to 
restore us from it. He is, indeed, the only restorer of 
the hopes and deliverer of the souls of men. And, in 
order to this, he held the splendor of his natural, his 
original perfections, in abeyance, as he came and dwelt 
among his children amid the homes of earth. His life 
exemplified the value of piety and the force of virtue. 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



243 



During a life of imsiillied excellence and unspotted puri- 
ty, lie spent the niglit in communion with God and the 
day in charity to man ; and left not the world until he 
had sown in its bosom the seeds of millenial reform and 
enduring glory. And, in his own proper time, Heaven 
and earth shall see of the travail of his soul/' until the 
one shall copy the example and rival the excellence of 
the other ! 

Behold him making his soul an offering for sin. Angry 
majesty yields to the plea of his sufferings, while he ne- 
gotiates the redemption of criminal, perishing millions. 
Heaven looks on in astonishment ; the foundations of the 
world misgive, and the pillars of creation tremble, while 
justice, in the liquidation of its claims, metes out to him 
the measure of a world's deservino-s. 

o 

The fearful, the august, ceremony of offering himself 
a sacrifice for sin, commenced in the garden, and is em- 
phatically styled his agony." Here the offering of 
himself evinced that his person combined the altar, the 
sacrifice and the priest. Here the weight and fire of 
Divine wrath beo^an to weio-h down and consume the 

o o 

sacrifice ; and had the weight and fire of this wrath rest- 
ed and seized upon the world of criminals for whom he 
died, that world, in the language of inspired imagery, 
would, in every moral sense, have been ground to pow- 
der, if, indeed, the visitation had not blended the melted 
earth and boiling ocean, and transformed this fair crea- 
tion into a wide, a waste, and a burning hell. 

Under the imputation of the iniquities of us all, we 
see him covered with a cloud of infamy, looking 
forward to the pangs of crucifixion, and exhausting 
the penal cup of all its curse and bitterness. Wound- 
ed, bruised and oppressed, in every member, every 
nerve, and every sense, still he suffered and still he tri- 



244 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

umphed, until liis atonement was finislied, accepted and 
rewarded. 

Universal nature relented at liis sufferings, and God's 
creation murmured at the cup lie drank. These were 
not the sufferings of a mere man. Did the mountains 
ever tremble at the death of a man, or the rocks divide 
at the crucifixion of a martyr ? Would such an event 
have silenced the harps of Heaven and spread dismay 
through all the depths of hell ? ]^o : illustrious v/as the 
sufferer and Godlike the victim, or nature would not 
have awoke in anguish thus to publish the Godhead of 
his person and the glory of his Cross. 

Then it was his right hand, the right hand of Jeho- 
vah, did valiantly;" for the death of our Lord was not a 
defeat — he yielded up the ghost triumphantly ; and the 
act, jeered by the infidel and scorned by the fool, dis- 
solved the gates of hell. As man had fallen by the 
malice of the devil, so he was to be restored by the 
merit of the Savior ; and thus he displayed the Divinity 
of his wisdom by making a way for our escape where he 
found none, and where we never should have found 
any. 

Our Lord died not like the illustrious dead of mortal 
memory. The death of him of Uti:a, for example, was 
said to be the orphanage of Rome. But, instead of gloom 
and despair, the sacrifice of Calvary was the hope of the 
world, and threw the illuminations of immortality over 
this vast sepulcher of souls ! 

This event, in a peculiar manner, magnified the Di- 
vine condescension. There was an apparent conflict be- 
tween the Divine attributes. Even Heaven itself seemed 
to be divided upon the question of man's recovery. Mer- 
cy, for example, inclined to save, but Justice interposed 
for satisfaction. Mercy inquired, Will not God be kind 



TELE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



245 



to tlie misery of man ? Justice replied, Sliall not tlie 
Judge of all the earth do right ? Mercy urged, Shall 
man lose the friendship and fruition of the Creator, and 
He the service and subjection of the creature, merely be- 
cause the malignity of hell, in evil hour, triumphed over 
human credulity ? Wisdom submitted, Shall sin, which 
provokes the execution, secure the abrogation of the 
law ? Majesty interposed and plead, That it did not be- 
come infinite greatness and purity to treat with defiled 
worms, with polluted dust, on any terms. Holiness 
shrank from the touch of moral pollution, and exclaimed, 
''Can God behold iniquity"? Eternal Truth quoted, 
" In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die 
while unbending Sovereignty filed its angry claims and 
plead for execution ! 

The sublimest spirits in Heaven were at a loss how to 
solve the difficulty. The human understanding, with all 
its intellectual reach, was staggered and confounded. In 
this fearful exigence, however, Mercy prevailed ; for 
Wisdom, interposing, suggested a Mediator, the arbit-er- 
ment of a daysman ; and this method of recovery pre- 
vailed without prejudice to any of the Divine perfections, 
and reconciled Godhead broke forth refulgently in the 
salvation of man — ''full orbed, in his whole round of 
rays complete." 

Mysterious adjustment ! stupendous arrangement ! 
To save man it became necessary that God, in one rela- 
tion, should overcome himself in another. Legal not 
less than moral barriers opposed the result, and both had 
to be removed, so that "the goodness and severity of 
God," the Divine justice and mercy, might appear to 
equal advantage in the great transaction of the world's 
atonement. 

Two principal relations belong to the Mediator — a 



246 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT, 



'^giff from God to man, and yet a ''sacrifice to God'* 
for man. He must be capable of the sentiments and 
afiections of both parties. He must have a common in- 
terest in both. And, as '' God manifest in the flesh,'' he 
secures the grand complex result without detriment to 
either party. The rights of Heaven were sustained, and 
the interests and wretchedness of earth consulted at the 
same time. 

But it would require a mind of more than human, of 
archangel vigor, to explicate fully the dignity of this 
mystery, and we must not attempt it. And hence we 
leave the more inscrutible reasons and maxims of the 
Divine conduct untouched, that we may have the con- 
sciousness of leaving them untarnished. 

Behold him, in his triumphant elevation, at the right 
hand of God, The rays of glory began to encircle him 
when he rose from the tomb : and now, enthroned on 
Heaven's eternal hill, he reigns the God of being and 
blessing, and all that lives, or moves, or thinks, or feels, 
is at rest or in motion, is subject to his sway. 

His sacrifice had prevailed ; and, in the odor of per- 
fection, ''as a sweet smelling savor," had come up be- 
fore God. He is now no longer under the curse and on 
the Cross, . but throned and crowned and sceptered. 
You no longer see his mangled body, his disfigured per- 
son, the cloud of his sorrows, and the obscuration of the 
Sun of RiQ:hteousness wadina: in blood and shinino- in 

O O o 

darkness. Xo lono-er are his sufierinors the diversion of 
the wicked and the joy of hell. You are not now called 
upon to witness the pain of the scourge, the furrow of 
the lash, the insult of the reed, and the anguish of the 
thorn ; the mockery of the knee and the prayer of hell, 
echoed by the roar of millions, though all the voices of 
Jerusalem, "His blood be on us and on our children." 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



247 



We do not ask you now wliat meant the disastrous gloom 
of the heavens, shedding remorseful terror on the myri- 
ads of gazers below ! We do not now point you to 
preternatural echpse and horror, falling on rushing 
thousands, as they hied down from the mountain to bury 
themselves in the common curse of Jerusalem ! 

In the midst of all these scenes — cruel, strange, mag- 
nificent and sad — he continued constant as goodness it- 
self, firm as the mountains of Judea, amid which he had 
been enthroned for ages, tranquil as Heaven, and is now 
set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. 
Scorn and mockery, shame and spitting, stripes and 
thorns, nails and death, the wrath of his Father and the 
curse of the law, these are exchanged for a scepter com- 
prehending universal dominion and the issues of destiny. 
Having accomplished the work of our redemption and 
resumed his life from the grave, with clouds for his 
chariot and ano-els his attendants, h^ mounted Heaven's 
''infinite steepness " and threw the sublimity of the uni- 
verse into shade, while deeply on the drinking ear fell the 
farewell tones of his parting benediction, and the glory- 
smitten disciples stood gazing, anxious to wing their own 
rapture, in the track of his ascension ! This majestic 
ascent, this triumphant passage to glory, seated him in 
the Heavenly places and subjected the world to his 
sway. 

The jurisdiction of Jesus Christ over man is founded 
upon his right of property in man ; and this right was 
created by the fact, that he not only gave being to man, 
but afterward redeemed him, and by means, too, the most 
extraordinary — the Lord of life and nature becoming 
subject to the laws and vicissitudes of the one and the 
other, by the assumption of our common humanity. 

What a magnitude of cost and difi&culty to overcome ! 



248 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



How are we lost in contemplating this mysterious — such 
darkening condescension. In the obscurity of his humil- 
iation, as the Branch" of patriarchal affinity and pro- 
phetic announcement, he grew up unobtrusively, '*like a 
plant out of dry ground but subsequently he rose and 
spread like a lofty cedar, overshadowing courts and 
thrones, and affording shade and protection to the faint 
and the weary of every wing and every clime ! 

When the illustrious sufferer bowed his head in mighty 
agony and gave up the ghost, the thrones and dominions 
of evil recoiled with dismay ; the principalities and pow- 
ers of darkness were signally and victoriously routed ! 
His crucifiers fled from his cross as from the cry of a de- 
feat — the ruin of an enterprise ! Heaven looked on in 
joyful astonishment ; earth trembled at the fearful visi- 
tation ; the secret chamber of the God of Israel tore its 
own vail, as in conscious horror, and bared to the eye of 
the awe-struck priest the desolate cherubim and depart- 
ed glory of the temple ; while hell, in all her dungeons, 
felt the thunder of the shock, and flamed fresh with the 
v/rath of the Lamb ! 

What must have been the feelings of the panic-strick- 
en disciples Vvdien he lay in the grave ? His resurrec- 
tion involved the interests of all our race, from the first 
progenitors of our kind down to the last succession of 
posterity. It was a period of gloom, during which the 
hope of a perishing v^orid hung trembling upon the point 
of agonizing suspense. But when he burst the barriers 
of the tomb and ascended to glory, Heaven became tho 
place of his enlargement, and the throne of the universe 
the seat of his empire 1 

Behold him the light and the guide of his people — the 
way^ the truth and the life. Heaven's pure intelligence 
shines upon our path through him, and his ministrations 



THE LAMB OF GOD BEEN AND SOUGHT. 249 

illume the dark and dreary intervals of human suffering 
and earthly pilgrimage. If we sit or walk in darkness, 
he is our light ; if we stumble or fall, he is the lifter up 
of our feet ; and to all our desponding fears he stands 
forth preeminently the light of life. He is the great cen- 
ter in which all the rays and lines of Revelation 
meet, as in a focal point, and thence, diverging, furnish 
their blended radiance, their overpowering effulgence ! 

Listen to his lessons of heavenly wisdom in the tem- 
ple, the synagogue, the desert ; by the wayside and 
on the sea-shore ; and especially hear and heed him 
when he makes Mount Olivet his pulpit and sheds im- 
rnortal instruction on the nations of earth. God himself, 
upon the mount of transfiguration, proclaims him the 
Lawgiver of the universe : " This is my beloved Son, 
hear ye him." He is the source of heavenly effulgence 
to a benighted world ; a sun that warms as well as 
shines ; that burns as well as brightens ; that shines by 
night as well as day : a sun that, rising from forth the 
cloudy throne of the invisible God, broke the night in 
which we had wandered long and far, with rays that, 
bright beyond all earthly splendor, gush livingly on the 
heart and give its hopes and ties to God ! 

Behold him the strength and protection of his people — of 
all who trust in him. Although few and feeble, exposed 
and trodden down ; although loved and prized by hrni 
alone, it is enough. No evil, no calamity, no afHiction, 
can finally injure them. Thunders may peal above and 
lightnings dart athwart your path ; the tempest may 
beat and the floods roll on, but the one shall die away in 
accents of peace, and the other expire in the radiance of 
hope ; while the tempest and the flood, resisted by the 
rock, shall return to their place, powerless as the foam- 
bom bubble that breaks upon their wave. 



250 THE I4AMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

From the heiglit of Heaven he stoops to your embrace 
and infuses strength into your weakness. Complete in 
him, you too may excel in strength.'' By nature you 
are lower, but by alliance higher, than the angels. In 
purpose, therefore, repose confidently, and in action 
stand fast. Let not your subtile and industrious enemy 
seduce you by policy or overthrow you by open battery. 
Remain in the hands of Christ, and then you occupy an 
inviolable sanctuary from which no enemy can ever take 
you. 

With your hope in him and your hold on Heaven, you 
have nothing to fear. You rest secure in your place, 
like the deep-seated mountain rocked by the thunder and 
washed by the cataract, but still breasting, unmoved, the 
strife of the storm and the roar of a thousand torrents ! 
Such is the God-vouched destiny of those by whom 
the Lamb of God is seen and sought, as urged in the 
text. 

Behold him in his Church and among his people, to re- 
ceive those who are without. With the fondness of a father 
bereaved of his children, he stoops to your embrace and 
asks you to return. He bends in pity over your path. 
He paints virtue in the colors of immortality, and dark- 
ens the alien shades of hell, that the one may win and the 
other deter you. Into one ear he infuses the melody of 
Heaven, and in the other pours the groans of the damned, 
that the one may thrill you with bliss and the other 
freeze you with horror. 

Wherever he infuses his light, is the glory of Heaven ; 
and wherever he inflicts his wrath, is hell without the com- 
pany of infernals or the staples of fire and brimstone. 
These are truths which are everywhere taught in his 
Word and found in the hand-writing of his Spirit. 

And, finally, to remove all fear, distrust or doubt, and 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 261 



falsify forever the worse than infidel assumption, that some 
of you were only created for death and hell, he interposes 
his oath, and, with blended majesty and kindness, in- 
vites you all to come, to look, and live. God grant you 
the beholding, the appropriating power of faith, that 
the Lamb of God may be seen and sought, before it 
becomes your involuntary destiny to repent without jDar- 
don, and believe without hope. 

Faith, in these great truths, like the eye in the tele- 
scope, surveying the expansions of distant space, places 
infinite perfection within the reach of human conception. 
The doubt and dread repelling us from the Creator are 
removed by the Redeemer ; a high moral pathway is 
thrown up and open from earth to Heaven ; and, amid 
the living wonders of the one and the other, the God 
and Father of all so descends from the stupendous im- 
mensity of his nature and workmanship, as to be found 
in individual, personal association with man, in the en- 
dearing relations of creation, providence and redemp- 
tion. And, in this way, the crowning mystery of our 
faith, to which we point you, presents the mingled 
grandeur and condescension of Godhead, in living picture 
before you, in the person of his Son. 

II. Behold him with reference to the ISTature and 
Terms of his Religion. The religion he taught, unper- 
verted by human taste, passion and interest, is a subject 
but too little understood, even among the baptized thou- 
sands of modern Israel. It is a subject upon which all 
need additional instruction, in view of its appropriate in- 
fluence. Behold him, then, taking away the sin of the 
world, not only by an original deed of expiation, but by 
the washing regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy 
Ghost. Without the latter, as an essential element in the 
great system of human recovery, the former never was 



252 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



intended to save you, and can afford you no ground 
even of hope. 

Look to him, then, hy rejpentance. Ask him for the 
sweet remorse which makes you hate your sins. Ask 
him to infuse into the current of your feelings the worm- 
wood and the gall of penitential regret, that you may 
look on the ways of sin and the gates of hell for the last 
time. Every day you live without repentance, say, with 
the startled Emperor of antiquity, I have lost a day," 
and resolve, with the blessing of God, you will never 
lose another. We urge the repentance which will make 
you hate the stain of sin worse than its punishment, the 
hell to which it leads — that will make you love the angel 
Religion, even more than her dowery, the heaven within 
her gift. 

Look to him hy faith. Of faith he is ^'Author and 
Finisher.'' Ask him for that which will point your 
wounded spirit to the only healing hand that pours the 
balm of life, and will turn your sight undaunted on the 
tomb. Faith, that will say to the winds and the waves 
of conscience and a troubled spirit, ^'be still and the 
lake of the waste, in summer stillness, is not more calm 
than the hushed emotions of the late tumultuated 
heart. 

Look to him in the faithful performance of duty. Have 
you, with the penitent Magdalene, washed his feet, as 
the good Chrysostom says, with the tears of repentance ? 
remain and wipe them up with the hairs of obedience. 
Go to him with a heart broken by the thunders of his 
law, and he will bind it up with the solace of his love, 
and restore to your disordered nature the health of life 
and hope. Let your life be one of high and unbending 
integrity. Abjure vice in all its forms, and aim at the 
purity of the heavens — not less inflexibly firm to the 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AXD SOUGHT. 253 



liope of immortalitT, tlian unTieldingly loyal to tlie 
honor of God. 

Look to him in his V/ord. Learn here the lessons of 
wisdom ; study here the science of salvation, unfolded 
in lines of light. Bend here an attentive eye, and the 
beams of Heaven's otttl day-spring Tvill break upon your 
vision and linger on yotir path. Study vrell and faith- 
fully the pages of this celestial treasury. Virtue vill 
be streno'thened — sin will be weak, and even ''devils 
infirm.'' Might will be infused into means, and the end 
before you glow with immortality. The springs of the 
Stagyrite and the fountains of Plato go dry, but here is 
a stream that, welling fi-om beneath the throne, shall 
everywhere gladden the city of God tipon earth, and 
lave its center and circumference above. 

Look to him by prayer. Prayer is a characteristic 
without which piety is never found. Without it the very 
existence of the other virtues of Christian character is 
impossible. It is man in humble, earnest negotiation vrith 
his God. It is the moral nerve, quickening the muscles of 
the soul to approach him. It is the bond and term of 
intercourse with Heaven, and the vehicle of transmission 
for its blessings. If your prayers go to Heaven, laden 
with sighs and stained with tears, they return accompa- 
nied by angels and freighted with blessings. That we 
have earth to kneel upon and Heaven to appeal to, is the 
proudest distinction of man ; and he who does not esti- 
mate its priceless value, who refuses to pray to God, has 
atheized his being and declared himself independent ; and 
if he do not find himself in the place of the Devil and his 
angels, Omnipotence will have failed in the purpose of 
circumventing and placing him there. 

Look to him in the ordinances of his house, and proper 
attention to all the means of grace. Without such observ- 



254 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



ance you forfeit all hope of tlie Divine favor. Let your 
baptismal vows be a standing lecture to obedience. Let 
the sacrament of the supper, the memorials of our 
redemption, point you to the Lamb of God. Let the 
hour and place of private devotion — of family oblation — 
social prayer, and the worship of the congregation — ele- 
vate your affections to ^'things above," and direct your 
anticipations to the durabilities of an eternal scene of 
heavenly enjoyment. 

hook to him in the practical^ prudential regulations of 
his Church for the extension of his Kingdom^ and the diffu- 
sion of piety. Look to him by a noble ambition to extend 
about you the gifts of God, anxiously essaying to bless 
all as he has blessed you. Open the sources of eleemos- 
ynary aid — unlock and scatter the revenues of benevo- 
lence. Feed and clothe the Lord of the poor in his 
representatives upon earth, and recollect that the ''ac- 
cursed" and doomed of the last day, are those who 
grudged the cost of mercy here. 

III. Look to him with reference to Human Condition — 
YOUR EARTHLY DESTINY. Looh to hivi in prosperity and 
affluence. Do this, lest your giddy height should prove 
the means of your fall — lest ''the pinacle of the tem- 
ple " should become the theater of temptation, and an 
*' exceeding high mountain" the birth-place of covetous 
ambition. Man, however elevated by accident or for- 
tune, remains, in the humbling language of the Book of 
Job, but "dust and ashes " still ; and the higher he is 
raised by prosperity, the more apt will he be to be blown 
away and scattered by the winds. A sight of the Cross, 
how^ever, and the self-crucifixion it implies, will give him 
his appointed level, and enable him to keep his proper 
equilibrium. 

Look to him in adversity, lest you faint by the way and 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



265 



fall a prey to despair. Should lie " break up the fallow 
ground" of your heart by affliction, it is in order to 
fruitfulness and fertility in virtue. Does he hold out the 
rod to you, submit, and with it will be borne to you the 
cup of salvation. Does he surround you with tempest and 
gloom, it is to show you the rainbow of mercy and the 
radiance of hope. Xo angle of the universe is too minute, 
difficult or obscure, for his gracious -notice and support. 
The meanest localities of earth have been the theater of 
heavenly emanations, and richly consecrated by inter- 
course with God. Witness the obscurity of the Savior's 
birth-place, and the revelations of desolate Patmos. 

Look to hir/i amid the activity and e/iterprise of life. 
Lay all under contribution to promote his glory. Let 
every action of life meditate the good of the soul. Let 
all your movements invoke his protection, and all your 
doings hallow and herald his name. Wherever you are, 
and whatever you do, imbibe his love and publish his 
praise. Let sin be, with you, an abjured, a crucified 
and expiring tyrant. 

hi oM your afflictions and sufferings, let the smile of 
resignation meet his eye, and secure his approbation. 
Be actuated by the same principles of filial regard — the 
same alacrous feelino- — whether bearino; ill or doin^ 
good ; and, in every vicissitude of fortune, hush the 
tumult of passion by the motto of faith, My Father 
does it all.'' The Cross, once truly beheld, will become 
a part of sight, and your devotion and solicittide will 
cling to it, as the morning star of memory, in all your 
toils and sorrows. 

Ye poor of the earth, do ye look to him. Allied to the 
Man of Sorrows by the tie of suffering and the claim of 
want, look to him, that you may be rich in faith, and co- 
heirs with his children. The poor are born to suffer : 



256 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



and in this respect alone, perhaps, are seldom, if ever, 
deprived of their natural inheritance. Yet you, ye 
poor, he delights to bless. You, he will cherish in the 
high places of his affection and favor, and extend to you 
the choicest predilections of his heart. Although he is 
returned to the bosom of his Father and the adoration 
of the celestial hosts, yet is he still ever mindful of 
you. Despair not, then ; he who listens to the cry of 
the outcast raven, and gives even to the thirsty worm its 
dew-drop in the moldering spaces of decay, will not, 
cannot, overlook the wants of the most needy of his 
children. In that you are the more needy, he cares for 
you with the deeper emphasis of kindness. 

lY. Look to him with reference to Character — the 
Moral aspects in which you stand to him. Ye penitent , 
do you look to him^ assured that every emotion of Godly 
sorrow that saddens your brow will cast its shadow to 
his throne. Does the tear of sorrow tremble in your 
eye — does the sigh of contrition heave your bosom — go 
to him with both, and he vrill dry the one and suppress 
the other, and fill you with all joy and peace in believ- 
ing. Although Heaven is the theater and witness of his 
elevation and glory, yet you it is his pleasure and pur- 
pose to bless — and the visits of his mercy are to the 
''contrite,'' in whatever part of his dominions. 

Ye tempted and dasquieted folloicers of his, do you, too, 
look up. Gather around the Cross and catch the healing 
streams of salvation. Bare your bleeding bosoms to the 
compassion of your great High Priest : say to him, here 
is a broken heart, bind it up — here is the smoking flax, 
revive, 0, revive its feeble flame, for it flickers to 
decay ! 

Do this, and you will find a heart-cheering glow of 
tenderness and trust floating over the whole of your 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



257 



conscious being. Go to him with a heart throbbing only 
with the pulsations of buried sorrow and martyred affec- 
tion, and soon, in that heart, shall be enshrined the 
bright and burning thoughts of peace, together with the 
warmth and ebullience of the most grateful emotion. 

het the icidoio and the orphan look to him. The widow 
and the orphan ! Prayer and piety blend with the very 
terms ; and we introduce them here because condition 
seems to give them character. Let them look to the 
Lamb of God and sue for his protection and tenderness. 
Let the heart of the one, Heaven having husbanded the 
question of her happiness, sing for joy," and the other 
rise up and, wiping the tears of orphanage, say, My 
Father !" 

Thus let ''the blessings of those who are ready to per- 
ish " surround and encircle him, and, comprehending 
every sphere and retreat of piety, let the day praise him 
and the night bring him glory, in the love, joy and obe- 
dience of regenerated millions, the next world's goodness 
and gladness being everywhere imaged forth in this, and 
the children of misfortune here looking forward and 
tending thither, rich in faith and full of boundless 
aims ! 

And most sincerely do we rejoice, that we are allowed 
to extend our appeal to more numerous classes of our 
kind, and those of a very different character ; and we 
would continue to press and vary it further, by urging 
the impenitent^ the unbelieving^ the careless^ the profanCf 
the ahaiidonedy the icise of this loorld, the icorshiper of 
Mammon, one and all, to look to the Cross and ask 
Heaven to melt down their frozen hearts into the current 
of repentance, that they may abjure the infidelity of 
their opinions and the atheism of their lives, before the, 
loss of all good and the inheritance of all evil, the per- 
11^ 



258 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

dition of the fool and the immortality of devils, shall give 
them their final estimate of a life of sin ! 

By the eternal weight of motive involved, we urge, 
they would ask Heaven to save them from the hated in- 
sensibility we deplore, before their feelings are iced and 
cursed into total indifference, and all within becomes a 
wintry waste, perished and irrenewable. 

Is the world, indefinitely, the object of ambitious re- 
gard, and is it here you offer incense and repose your 
hopes ? Reminding you how fearfully you are without 
warrant, both with regard to the god of your idolatry 
and the hopes and chances of the worshiper, unknowing 
how soon the one shall be burnt up and the other lost, 
we hasten to recall you to the Cross of Christ, as the 
symbol of the only inheritance worth the ceremony of its 
title-deeds, a treasure that would pauperize earth's 
proudest hoarder, rounding his millions or counting the 
rental of the Indies ! With all the ease and sufficiency 
this world can give, vast is the chasm between your 
wishes and your destiny. Fatally, indeed, will yours be 
found a bootless path ; but, having rushed upon it, if 
you refuse to return, it only remains that the eye hang 
over the dread dismembering gulf beneath ! When, too 
late for change, you will find, alas, that a life of blind 
and brutal fruition, with all its charms and appliances, 
is unable to still one agonizing throb in death, or melo- 
dize a single groan of despair ! 

These are, indeed, the shades of the picture, but be- 
long to it as properly as its lights. The motives of the 
Pulpit must excuse its plainness. Compromise here 
would be a shameful surrender of duty. We see the 
banned cup of pleasure at your lips, and shall we not 
dash it ! We find you slumbering beneath the upas and 
avalanche, and shall we not alarm you ! We see you 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



259 



drifting upon the last plank of your shattered bark, with 
the death-storm driving before you, and may we not ex- 
postulate with the plainness of truth, without incurring 
the charge of unbecoming rudeness or want of taste ! 
With regard to many of you, if you do not reform soon, 
infinity to one you will never do so ! And how much 
better to save you, if possible, even at the expense of 
your approving regards for a time, than to see you final- 
ly heiring the recompense of crime, vfhere no Thermal 
waters nor Lethean draught can wash out the stains or 
quench the burning memory of the damned ! 

Finally : We urge upon you Motives and offer you 
Encouragement. Behold him, then^ as King of nations 
and Lord of the hosts of Heaven, enlarging the diameter 
of his Church and extending the scepter of his dominion 
to the utmost bounds of the world of man, hastening the 
destined renovation of earth to its long lost grandeur, 
when every heart shall beat high with life and hope, and 
the soligs of salvation float on every breeze. 

Ever since his Humanity left the tomb clothed witli 
glory and was borne to the heavens, he has been faith- 
fully managing the vast affairs of his kingdom so as to 
bring the utmost possible glory to God and good to man, 
and he will continue to do so until, with the earth-daik- 
ening cloud for his chariot, the lightning his spear, and 
the thunder his battle shout, he shall re-descend to judge 
the world. 

Personally, he has disappeared from earth ; but invisi- 
bly, yet really, he is still in our midst, with his Spirit to 
guide and bless, while the Word of his testimony is al- 
ways before us, like a pillar of light amid the desolation 
of life and the waste of ages, ever radiating to the dis- 
tant horizon about, and destined to enlarge the circle of 
illumination, until Heaven and earth shall be synonyms 



260 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

for the same reign of righteousness — tlie kingdoms of this 
world having become the kingdoms of onr God and his 
Christ. 

Behold him OjS he may he beheld — as others have beheld 
him. AYe will not calumniate Eternal Goodness by ask- 
ing you to do what some fated inability renders impossi- 
ble. We ask you to do what you can, and ought to do, 
without delay. Heaven will never withhold, but always 
afford, the necessary help. We ask you to behold him 
as ''Abraham saw his glory and was glad." Behold him 
as he was beheld by patriarchs, prophets and apostles— 
as he was beheld by the acclaiming disciples when he 
rose from the grave and the mountain- — as he was beheld 
by the Heavenly hosts on his return from the achieve- 
ment of our redemption. Listen to the joy of enraptured 
millions, while, in the presence of the throne, they heard 
him exclaim, in language that filled Heaven with the 
gladness of the ''new song," "Father, I have finished 
the work which thou gavest me to do ;" and heard, too, 
other unearthly sounds — the voicings of immortality — - 
harp and trump, and song and shout, rolling back the 
acclaim, " Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us unto 
God by thy blood." We ask and urge you to behold 
him, then, not walking the earth unattended, as once he 
did, but in regal enthronement, "above all principal- 
ity and power," and receiving the homage of a kneeling 
world ! 

Behold him i?i your midst. This you may do, for the 
same moment of duration finds him in this and every 
place. Near or remote, as it regards us, is neither with 
him — he reigns alike with regard to both. It is he who 
touches and melts down your heart : it is he who brings 
that sigh to the birth and swells the rolling tear of pious 
grief : it is he who smites that Pagan knee with weak- 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



261 



ness and makes it bend in prayer : it is he who whispers 
to you by day that all is not right, and tells you by night 
that you are not safe : it is his Holy Spirit that makes 
you feel religion is not a tale of superstition, nor hell the 
fabled dream that fools affect. God grant, in the burn- 
ing language of prophecy, if you refuse to behold him in 
your midst, that '*the stone may cry out of the wall, and 
the beam out of the timber answer it " ! 

There is another aspect in which the Lamb of God 
should be beheld. It is one of fearfiil bearing and dread 
attraction : 

Behold him in the overthrow and 'punishmeni of his ene- 
mies. What of the Jews who condemned him to death ? 
Where and in what position and repute do you find their 
once haughty name in the book of nations ? Where and 
what of the Romans, his crucifiers, and afterward, in his 
followers, his persecutors ? In the mighty seat once 
wielding the freedom of national birth-right and the em- 
pire of the world, what succession " have we not had 
of dark and gloomy incumbents, covered with blood and 
murder and abandoned to intrigue and rapine ! How 
long will the trodden down millions of unhappy, degen- 
erate Rome, endure the oppressions of the triple crown- 
ed Legate" — but not of Heaven — reigning a hated 
usurper in the palace of the Caesars 1 

Ask the angel of death for the names and number of 
those whose refusal to behold the Lamb of God" has 
already given them habitation and place among the out- 
casts of eternity ! Enter the deep and the dreary tracts 
of final abandonment from God, and take the census of 
those who have felt the thunder of his power and perish- 
ed at his rebuke ! 

If you do not behold and seek him here, you must in- 
herit your vicious choice in the rejection of him hereaf- 



262 



THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 



ter. Almiglity justice will mete out to you, not tlie com- 
mon irrevocable curse of those who perish out of Christ, 
but the infinitely greater, the aggravated damnation, chal- 
lenged by the formal, deliberate rejection of offered salva- 
tion. Even the mercy seat of Heaven will rise up to blast, 
and the blood of sprinkling seal your ruin, and quicken the 
flames of retribution ! Because, when tendered a thou- 
sand and a thousand times, and in as many forms, you 
refused his salvation ; and the single reflection, the bit- 
ter recollection, that you might have been saved, will 
barb with keener anguish the memories of remorse, while 
the once beseeching appeal of the Judge, I would and 
ye would not," will be remembered only to intensify the 
bitterness of regret and render immortal the despair of 
the damned ! 

Behold him now — it may, it tvill^ with many, soon be toolaie. 
We all know the transitory nature, the sad discontinuity, 
of human life. Rapidly, with every one of us, the shad- 
ows are changing upon the circuit of the dial. In a little 
while it will be earth to earth with every one of you, 
and the dust of the church-yard will press upon your 
cold and unpalpitating bosoms. The prostrate frame, 
the swimming eye, the faltering tongue, the sinking 
pulse, the mantling gloom, the last gaze and expiring 
groan, will tell you all is over ! Death, with unpitying 
cruelty, will thrust his cold iron deep into the heart, and, 
parting with all you lived to love and cherish here, 
eternity receives you, stained with the unexpiated guilt 
of having refused to behold the Lamb of God ! 

And why — Heaven and earth, with a thousand organs, 
and with all the regret of defeated kindness, urge the 
expostulation — ''why will you die?" Even your rea- 
son, to which you appeal as beaconing the path of your 
pilgrimage, must infer his right to be beheld, and en- 



THE LAMB OF GOD AND SOUGHT. 



263 



force the duty of timely attention to liis claims. May 
the grace of God prevail with you so almightily as to 
induce you to behold the Cross of Christ and live ! But 
if you still refuse, then we leave you to fasten an eye, 
never to be closed, upon the fearful reality, the appall- 
ing definitiveness, of your doom ! 

Behold him while you live and uhen you die. Amid the 
vif^issitudes of life and in the arms of death look to Him. 
And here. Christians, we address ourselves to you. Pil- 
grims hailing a distant bourn, your path lies homew^ard. 
And w^ill you tremble with your feet upon the threshold 
of your Father's house ! Death is but a point betw^een 
the future and the past, and to you is but the crumbling 
of your prison walls, while the blended light of receding 
earth and approaching Heaven is gilding the last hours 
of life's eventful struggle. Faithful to him, firmly mili- 
tant for God and good through life, you look forward to 
Heaven as your country and residence. He has only 
preceded you to prepare mansions for you. Let your 
hearts and hopes, then, ascend with your ascended Savior, 
who, as your great precursor, having led captivity cap- 
tive, despoiling death and hell of their dominion, is still 
heard cheering you upon the path of life, in language 
that at once renew^s the assurance and solves the problem 
of immortality, Because I live ye shall live also " ! 

Almighty Godness grant you may so behold the Lamb 
of God in this wwld, that you may be elevated to the 
highest summit of heavenly grandeur in the next ! be- 
holding the throne and equipage, and finding 3^ourselves 
encircled with the glories of the Lamb, w^here even the 
intellectual eye, fortified for the immediate intuition of 
the infinite God, and conversant vfith celestial objects, 
shall be astonished and confounded by the overpowering 
brightness, the imperishable splendor, of the vision ! 



264 THE LAMB OF GOD SEEN AND SOUGHT. 

And no^y, amid tliis scene, everywhere wreathing and 
mantling with beauty and magnificence the fields and 
the temples of eternity — now that the redeemed of one 
world have conquered by his blood, and the unfallen of 
others been confirmed by the word of his testimony " — 
now, from the one and the other, the ranks and tribes 
of peopled immensity and the distant places of the uni- 
verse — let the extatic acknowledgment roll in and be 
borne upward to his seat, Worthy, worthy is the Lamb 
that was slain ! 



CHRIST CRUCIFIED. 



266 



SERMON IX 

CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE BURDEN OF 
CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 

" Declaeixg unto jou the testimony of God — I determined not to 
kno^ anything among you, save Jesus Christ and him cruci- 
fied."—! Cor. ii, 1, -2. 

Such is the text of our reflections for the cominof hour. 
And unless a misapprehension of the truth has so color- 
ed our estimate as to involve us in utter self-deception 
with regard to its meaning and application, no language 
can express, no limits define, no depth of penetration 
fathom, the deep and intensely absorbing interest of tbe 
subject on which we address you. 

No form of language, or association of thought, is equal 
to the grandeur of the theme or the range of its compre- 
hension. It is a subject blending the hopes and the 
fears, the interests and the associations, of divided 
worlds — all that is good or grand in this, with all that is 
grave or awful in the next. 

To amuse or please you, therefore, meet your wishes 
or deprecate your disappointment, is no part of the busi- 
ness of the ensuing hour. A simple wish to profit and 
subserve the interests of a pure and lofty piety, has 
alone motived the determination and given birth to the 
I resolution the text avows. Declaring unto you the tes- 
I timony of God, we determine not to know anything 
among you, save Jesus Christ and him crucified. And, 
if God will but glorify our subject, by leading you to 
regard it as the great beacon-light of your immortality, 
we ask no other boon. 

In PROCEEDING TO A SUMMARY CONSIDERATION OF THE 

12 



266 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 

doctrine of the text, we shall, first, notice the 
Knowledge of which it speaks, as peculiar and distin- 
guishing IN ITS KIND, AND THEREFORE NOT LIKELY TO MEET 
^ THE APPROVAL OF THE AGE IN WHICH IT WAS FIRST PUB- 
LISHED. The position of St. Paul, and the aspects of the 
religion he preached, were alike peculiar in relation both 
to Jew and Greek. At the time the words of the text 
were penned, the Apostle had in his eye the haughty 
Jew and philosophic Greek, both of whom, from the ap- 
peal of different motives and interests and the impulse of 
variant feelings, conspired in the prompt rejection of the 
Christian religion, whose most prominent truth is that 
of salvation by the Cross of Christ. 

For this identity and yet dissimilarity of motive and 
impulse, the true grounds and reasons are to be sought 
in the analogous and yet very different character of these 
distinguished ancient races, at the period of their history 
now in question. The Jews, as the chosen and peculiar 
people of God, accustomed immemorially to a succession 
of prodigies and wonders, the high hand and outstretch- 
ed arm of Jehovah manifest in their own supernatural 
fortunes and extraordinary history, and long and per- 
~ v^rsely misguided by the hopes of a merely national de- 
liverer, stumbled most strangely and inconsistently at 
the idea of a crucified Messiah as the medium of interpo- 
sition between God and men. 

Surprising and unexpected, however, as the blindness 
or oversight may appear, they remembered not, it would 
seem, that their fathers, stung by scorpions in the wil- 
derness of their exodus from Egypt, were healed by the 
vision of the brazen serpent, elevated expressly in pre- 
figuration of him who was afterward to be ''lifted up 
from the earth." 

They overlooked the plain and obvious conclusion, 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



267 



that, according to their own prophecies, numerous and 

explicit, Messiah was first to suffer amid fearful scenes 
of abasement and trial, and then, having been made per- 
fect by suffering, to '^ift up the head" and enter into 
his gloiy. 

Blinded by prepossession, they saw not that their own 
instituted types and sacrifices, and all their legal purifi- 
cations, were full of a suffering Savior, whose triumph 
was to be the reward of his sufferings. 

They seem not to have adverted to the predicted fact, 
that Christianity, as taught by Christ, was in fact the 
religion of their fathers in its last, its best, and most en- 
gaging form ; and that the vfonders of their national 
story — Lhe redemption in Eg^/pt, the passage of the sea, 
the pillar of fire, the flaming mountain, the descending 
manna, and the streams of the rock— were all in attesta- 
tion of the hope, and in anticipation of the glory, of Mes- 
siah's day and reign. 

The necessity of specification, indeed, seems to be en- 
tirely superceded ; for the Jews, in a body, as an entire 
people, had been a confederate nation of prophets, cher- 
ishing and announcing, by all their ceremonies, symbols 
and institutions, the approaching manifestation of the 
Son of God. 

The doctrine of redemption by the Cross of Christ had, 
by the prophets themselves, been made the center of 
faith and ethics, and was, even then, a current strongly 
set, and drawing into it all the events and issues of time 
and space. It was looked upon as pregnant with high 
moral ends and bearings, and as exhibiting the impress 
of the prescience, the wisdom and the benevolence, of 
God — while all the aims and interests of nations and em- 
pires, in the long roll of ages, were destined to bow to 
its mighty designs ! 



268 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



Why, then, it may be asked, did the Jew reject Chris- 
tianity ? Simply, it would seem, because his religion, 
subjectiyely considered, was but a corruption of the re- 
ligion of his Fathers ; and the surpassing, unlooked-for 
purity of the Christian system, proved utterly revolting 
to the partial eye and jaundiced vision of a systematic, 
incorrigible bigot. 

Such was the revolt of superstition. And now let us 
examine the recoil of philosophy, and mark the results 
of both. The Greeks, haughty in science and the dis- 
tinction conferred by letters, and seeking wisdom and 
preeminence in kindred pursuits, had only to hear of a 
crucified sufferer as the savior of men, to reject the ab- 
surd, unlikely doctrine of salvation by his Cross — with 
them the symbol and the seal of infamy — as fraught 
with weakness and folly. 

Hence the Jew and the Greek, alike blinded and ma- 
lignant, were mutually prepared for the rejection of Jesus 
Christ and him crucified. It was the rock of offense with 
one, because innovating upon his intolerant, exclusive 
bigotry ; and an object of contempt with the other, as 
unworthy his superior social polish and civic ambi- 
tion 1 

The apparent paradox of life resulting from death, in 
the light of cause and effect, although in close analogy 
with well known natural phenomena, was a position in 
the face of which the groveling Jew and lettered Greek 
cast the frown of unmingled disdain — the scowl of a most 
determined rejection. The grand reason of all this, 
whether viewed in the light of reason or Revelation, 
was, they knew not the Scriptures nor the power of 
God." 

Ignorant of the character of God, as revealed in his 
Word and in his works, and darkly blinded with regard 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



269 



to his will and purposes, they vainly endeavored, by the 
finger and aid of human science, relying alone upon their 
own sagacity and information, to trace the alleged con- 
nection between the Cross of Christ and the recovery of 
man ; and did not perceive that it depended solely upon 
the pre-appointment, the will and arbitration of Heaven, 
above the unaided reach and beyond the discoveries 
of erring reason — and hence their rejection of the 
Gospel. 

The Greeks, further, were a people emphatically de- 
voted to learning ; and, giving it body and condensation, 
form and drapery, it became the god of their idolatry. 
[Numerous circumstances favored such a result. 

The insular position and maritime relations of their 
country, geographically, as well as by the laws of taste 
and habit, separated from all other nations, together 
with the liberty and independence, and the consequent 
activity and enterprise, which are known to have flour- 
ished in all their states and provinces, were circumstances 
highly favorable to the successful culture of genius and 
science, as the gifts of nature and art. 

A mere glance at facts of such historic note will be 
sufficient. The Greeks had early received letters from 
Egypt and Phoenicia, and after their enthusiastic seizure 
and appropriation by themselves, they gave them to the 
world. Their far-famed attainments in the whole range, 
the varied encyclopedia of the then arts and sciences, had 
attracted the attention and commanded the admiration 
of all surrounding nations, until, finally, the name of 
Greece had become imperishably connected with all the 
glory of classic fame. And thus proudly fortressed in the 
splendor ?nd fascination of this world's wi^sdom, which 
bounded their hopes and their vision, it was not at all 
likely the fastidious, philosophic Greek would willingly. 



270 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 

or witliont debate and hesitation, submit to the humbling 
doctrines of the crucified Savior of men. 

Add to this, their many rehgious mysteries and 
solemnities had, with the progress of national advance- 
ment, been successively adjourned from consecrated 
woods and groves to splendid fanes and temples, every- 
where dotting hill and vale and shore, both of peninsular 
Greece and the islands of her unrivalled Archipelago — 
structures, the magnificence of which casts into shade 
all the slender imitations and boasted glory of modern 
architecture. And hence, again, they would be the less 
likely, from this as well as other circumstances, to ap- 
preciate the character and conform to the religion of one 
who had not, by civil title, where to lay his head, and 
the ritual of whose religion, typing the true and the heav- 
enly in every other, was simple and uncostly. 

Such were the state and taste of Jew and Greek at 
the time Paul penned the language of the text. The 
one was devoted to religious pomp, external parade, and 
legendary tradition — the other gloried in intellectual 
prowess and philosophic attainment; and both were 
quite too stately and self-sufficient not to incur the haz- 
ard of immortal loss — all the evil the hell of Christian- 
ity involves — rather than not find the way to Heaven 
themselves, unled and uninfluenced by others. 

One would have supposed that the infinite desirable- 
ness of salvation of all, viewed as a question of direct 
and most imperative behoof, would have induced Jew 
and Greek gladly to embrace the Christian system, upon 
a comprehensive examination of its singularly striking 
evidence. But, so far from this, they utterly refused 
the subject any examination at all, of whatever kind, 
except by the standard of their own ignorance and pre- 
judice ; and this, too, amid all the boasted light of 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN? PREACHING. 



271 



nature, relied upon by the Greek : and, althongli, in tlie 
instance of the Jew, every vision from Heaven — every 
preliminary movement of th-e chariot of God for four 
thousand years preparatory to the presence and message 
of his Son, as since made known to Jew and Gentile — 
had been a solemn attestation of the doctrine of Christ 
crucified, as the sum and the substance of the Christian 
redemption for which they waited, and alike the theme and 
the reason of the apostles' ministry and martyrdom. 

Such were the prevailing- prejudices of Jew and Greek 
at the date of the text ; and upon these and the claims 
of the new religion issue was joined, and St. Paul, in the 
language of the text, aimed a blow (and it was one of 
death and overthrow) at the root of both these mischiev- 
ous, worldly systems, and reveals the startling, mortify- 
ing truth, that peace with God in this, and the rewards 
of happiness in the world to come, are not to be sought 
upon the grounds of personal merit and social distinc- 
tion, as vainly dreamed by Jew and Greek, but through 
Jesus Christ and him crucified. 

This Avas the o-rand, distinctive truth constitutino- the 
life and soul of his ministry. It was the distinguishing 
staple of his newly adopted creed. The Gospel of the 
Crucifixion was, in his eye, not only invested with a lofty 
preeminence over Jewish dogma and Grecian dream, 
but, in fact, in the unmeasured reach of its elevation and 
grandeur, supremely ecliptive of all other creeds and 
systems^ And, although he came into church loaded 
with Egyptian gold," the treasures of both Eastern and 
Classic lore, yet, in his estimation, this proud accumu- 
lation of mental accomplishment was lighter than dross 
in comparison with the majestic simplicity of the Gospel 
truth. 

And, accordingly, with the Jew and the Greek, it was 



272 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



not the wont of St. Paul to compound or temporize. 
Wherever he presented himself, preaching the Cross, the 
movement was marked by struggle and conflict. He 
threw into their assemblies the elements of a conflagra- 
tion. His deeds were those of lofty daring. His ener- 
gy — his majesty — his impressiveness of appeal — roused 
into action the sterner-bent and master-mood of mind in 
Jerusalem and Athens, Ephesus and Corinth. The 
Priesthood everywhere felt the thunder of the shock — 
and the sympathy of the convulsion struck dumb the 
schools of philosophy ! 

We have said the rejection of Christianity, by Jew 
and Gentile, was from very different motives — from the 
im])ulse of feelings essentially diverse in kind. The 
Grvvli, as a pagan, knew nothing of any direct, authentic 
communication from Heaven in the shape of a revelation, 
and tlie proposition was by him rejected with disdain, as 
a dream of superstition. Hence, by a single step, 
Christianity was rejected by the Greek as utterly incred- 
ible — as sheer, unmitigated foolishness. 

Not so the Jew, however. The Jew admitted the fact 
of a supernatural communication from God to man, and 
its miraculous attestation by the interposition of God. 
But he denied the reality of such revealments, and the 
Divinity of such proofs, in the personal ministry of 
Jesus Christ, and ascribed the God-like wonders of his 
life and ministry to other causes — causes at once inad- 
equate and ^iltogether unaccountable in their admitted 
connection. 

In coming to this conclusion, however,, the Jew met with 
serious and alarming difficulty. He was resolved upon 
the rejection of Jesus Christ and the dishonor of his mis- 
sion, and yet he saw the hand of God visibly, fearfully 
connected with that mission. Thus, he hesitated, delayed 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



273 



and reasoned. Isow yielding to the impulse of irreso- 
lution, and then, again, for the purposes of reassurance, 
addressing himself to a calculation of consequences ; 
until finally, judicially blinded and left to himself, he 
met the Greek upon the ground of a common hostility, 
and both together stumbled over Christianity, and learnt, 
alas ! beyond the reach of doubt, the lesson of its truth 
in the hell they had mutually set at nought, as a Galilean 
dream, unworthy the creed of the one or the philosophy 
of the other, 

II. Let us notice the more specific Ends and Bear- 
ings OF this Knowledge ; and, in order to this, we 

ASK YOU TO CONTRAST IT WITH A BRIEF ReVIEW OF THE 

state of Religious Knowledge throughout the World, 

AT THE TIME OF THE COMING OF ChRIST. We CaU noticO S 

few material points only. It is clearly evidenced by a 
great variety of proofs, that all the various forms and 
modifications of Idolatry, Polytheism, and Image wor- 
ship, throughout the world at the period in question, 
were but corruptions — grossly distorted copies and imi- 
tations of the true religion, as it originally existed in the 
family of Noah. 

It is with perfect ease, and no small degree of accu- 
racy, that, appealing to analysis and induction, we trace 
upon the page of history (uniting sacred and profane, 
and including the heroic-poetic cycle) the declensions in 
faith and piety, and the knowledge and worship of the 
true God — the God of Revelation — from the ^^oevean 
age down, say, to the theogany of Hesiod and Homer, 
and the more sensuous mythology of the Hindoos (nearly 
coeval with that of Greece), until finally, amid the absurd 
frivolity, the debasing puerilities and the all -engrossing 
mummery of Pagan Idolatry, in its myriad forms, the 
recognition and worship of the one true God had become 



274 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTIKCTIVB 

everywliere extinct, except witliin the national precincts 
of Judea, and, perhaps, a few contiguous countries. 

The majestic and showy tree of human knowledge, as 
in the history of our first ancestors in paradise, had led 
to the exclusion of the Creator and hJs claims, by the 
substitution of its fruits and engrossments, for the 
weightier interests of truth and piety ; while the tradi- 
tions of the Jews, and the philosophy of the Greeks and 
Orientals, had, by their haughty pretensions and lofty 
dictation, well nigh fabled the God of the Bible, together 
with the truths and ethics of all his earlier revelations, 
out of the world. Indeed, within the range of the 
Atheistic negation of which we speak — in view of all 
practical results — the exclusion was complete. God 
was not," in any veritable sense, to any available pur- 
pose, in all their thoughts;" nor was he truly and 
honorably recognized in any of their bastard systems of 
philosophy or religion. 

Accordingly, we learn, that the grandsons of Noah 
early branched off into separate families and nations, 
each increasing, however dissimilarly, the corruption of 
the primitive religion, and gradually forming its own 
peculiar system of Idolatry, until, in a few ages. Classic 
Greece had her thirty thousand gods ; Imperial Rome, 
according to Yarro, eighty thousand, and, according to 
others (at a different period, probably), three hundred 
thousand ; while the nations of central Asia boasted a 
rabble of divinities numbering three hundred and thirty 
millions ! 

God of mankind ! What lunacy ! What utter fatuity ! 
The worse than stupid folly of all this parade of godhood 
among the nations of the earth, at the date in ques- 
tion, must be felt by all, and no proof can be necessary. 
The veriest devotee, living as long as Methuselah, and 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



with the industrious sagacity, Tvere it possible, of a whole 
school of Aristotles, might have died and perished in 
the hell he sought to shun, before he could have learn- 
ed the name, shape, color, or claims, of one-half of 
them ; and, by this time, the other half would have 
needed the kindness of indispensable repairs — -been given 
to inevitable decay, or blended in undistingiiishable pu- 
trefaction. 

Kence, how commandingly urgent was the call for a 
corrective dispensation i And, accordingly, the preach- 
insf of Christ crucified amono- ^'all nations," beoinnino; 
at Jerusalem, was designed to remove these abuses, and 
thus restore and re-promulge the patriarchal religion, 
itself of celestial origin, and now, as originally intended, 
made perfect in Christ. It contemplated the titter de- 
molition of the myriad forms and entire system of 
Pagan Idolatry, and the thorough expurgation of the 
Jewish religion, with all its surreptitious and extra addi- 
tions. The burden of its mission was the recall of a 
world long gone astray from truth and virtue — -the 
return of our fallen planet, which was seen in dreary 
alienation, floating darkly amid the fairer forms of God's 
creation. 

Yoti will perceive at once, that, with the state of things 
we have described, the knowledge of Christ in the text 
contrasts most strikingly and vividly. The lofty strains 
of Jewish bards had rendered the long looked for Messi- 
ah, significantly '-'the desire of all nations: " and, in the 
plainest dress and richest colors of the celestial pencil, 
he stood forth upon the page of prophecy fairer than the 
children of men. 

And when he came, the unerring description of the 
heaven-guided Seers, was more than answered. All na- 
ture, with quick discernment, made haste to do him honor 



276 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



and own and crown him God of all ! The mountains 
bowed at the approach of his footsteps, the valleys rose 
at the sound of his voice, and the ocean billow flung at 
his feet the homao;e of its thunder and its streno-th ! 

We have already noticed the unnatural alliance be- 
tween superstition and philosophy ; or, if you will, the 
separate yet coincident hostility of each, to the Christian 
religion. And we repeat, it was against all this vain and 
empty parade of superstition and learning, pregnant with ' 
the most mischievous anti- christian issues, that our Apos- 
tle puts himself in arms and publishes the burning chal- 
lenge, Where are the wise, w^here is the scribe, where 
is the disputer of this world ?" ''hath not God," in the gift 
of his Son and the revelation of his Will, *' made foolish the 
wisdom of the world V This single sentence placed under 
the ban of the Cross the magnificent trappings of Jewish 
pomp, and shattered the gaudy prism through which 
the Greek had for ages gazed on the glories of Pagan 
Mythology ! 

And with such a text, who can be at a loss for the 
comment? You may flourish the dogmas of superstition 
in the synagogue, and sport at will among the plausi- 
bilities and fascinations of this world's wisdom — philos- 
ophy, falsely so called, boasting its retreat at Athens, 
and 'Extending its dictation to confederated Greece : but I 
am determined, even in polished. Imperial Corinth — as 
upon the Acropolis at Athens — to know nothing, as the 
crowning excellence, the grand morality of my ministry, 
*' save Jesus Christ and him crucified;" and this I shall 
do in my preaching and ministrations among you, al- 
though in your estimation — the judgment of this world's 
wisdom — it be done with unskillfulness of manner, and 
even in a crucified style ! The hero of the early drama of 
the Gospel, upon the theater of the Gentile world, gal- 



BURDE^^ OF CHRISTIAN PREACHIXG. 



277 



lantly resolved to rise, and cleave the heaven of revealed 
truth to its zenith, if he had to do it with a crippled 
TS'ing ! 

Such was the noble, the heroic resolution of our Apos- 
tle. A resolution alike worthy of St. Paul, his coadju- 
tors and successors, and without which our temples, our 
altars, and our solemnities, whatever may be their parade 
of signs and symbols, becom^e a cold and a heartless des- 
olation ! 

Where is the wise, where the scribe, where the dis- 
puter of this world ! Can you resist the imagination 
that before the Corinthian crowd, Paul varied and am- 
plified his appeal ? AVe can almost hear its startling ech- 
oes, as it rang through crowd and portico, column and 
temple ! The arts and sciences have their value, and the 
world will appreciate their worth and use, but Christi- 
anity is above all estimation. Language, with its attend- 
ant associations, may blend in one community individti- 
ahs, families and nations : btit reliaion, as tauo^ht bv 
Christ, unites us to God, and makes us heir the thrones 
of eternity. Philosophy may amuse and improve you in 
the regions of abstraction. Poetry may wrap yoti in the 
intoxicating dreams of sentimental perfectibility ; but the 
relioion we teach, will elevate vou into fellowship with 
God and throne you amid the grandeur of his hosts. 
Astronomy may lead yoti sublimely wandering over the 
tracts of infinity and the territories of space ; but Christi- 
anity, overlooking the inferior places of creation, will con- 
duct you to the home of God — the pavilion of uncreated 
excellence — where goodness and eternity, God and his 
people, meet in final embrace to part no more. Agricul- 
ture, with its kindred arts, may supply you with bread, and 
sustain life for a season ; but this religion secures your 
immortal welfare and identifies your happiness with the 



278 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



roll of ages. Architecture, the glory of Greece, and espe- 
cially of Corintli, may afford you shelter from the heat, 
a covert from the storm, and proudly minister to the 
gratification of ambition and taste ; but religion, eldest 
daughter of Heaven, fairest offspring of the everlasting 
Father, cherishes for you the promise of a residence in 
the God-built chambers of the celestial world, whose re- 
fulgent splendors shade m darkness the proudest stories 
of the Heavens ! 

Such is the surpassing excellence, the overpowering 
preeminence, of the Gospel of Christ. It not only rose 
above the age that witnessed its first promulgation, but 
it carried the age along with it. It came to man, big 
with the hopes of illustrious promise and triumphant 
deliverance. 

Wherever it prevailed, the altars and the incense of 
Paganism—the whole heathen Mythology, with all its 
Jove-born dignity — became a ruin and a mockery. Phi- 
losophy was despoiled of its dreams — superstition fled in 
horror from the ruins of her broken scepter. The arts of 
Greece and the arms of Alexander were dismantled of 
their attraction, and Christianity is seen issuing her 
mandates from beneath the shadow of the pyramids, and 
dictating the law of life in the palace of the Caesars ! 

III. Let us connect this knowledge with the proper 

SUBJECT of it in THE TEXT THE CLAIMS AND RELATIONS 

OF Jesus Christ and him crucified. On this subject the 
Scriptures are the only source of information. Here only 
we learn his character, and all or nothing is true with re- 
gard to him. Here, however, the high and exclusive 
distinctions of Deity — the essential and immutable des- 
ignations of God-head — are awarded him ; and if he 
be not what this language assumes, to our conception, 
the Bible is a cheat, and the creed of the atheist becomes 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



279 



the motto of the Christian, ''there is no God." For 
many of the most lofty and distinctive descriptions of 
Deity, found in the Bible, relate to Jesus Christ ; and if 
these mean nothing, the rest may mean nothing also. 

But a truce to the semi-infidel supposition. The doc- 
trine we assume, the God-head of Messiah, is the great 
corner-stone of the Christian fabric. He is before all, 
and above all. He claims nature, men and angels, as 
his workmanship. He gives law, as he gave birth, to his 
intellicvent creation, and his will is the sole basis of all 
the statutes of his kingdom. 

Hence he is, alike, author of nature and sovereign of 
the world. But, in tracing the connection between the 
one and the other — his essential nature and sovereign 
character — we are compelled to feel, how truly it is pos- 
sible for thought and language mutually to impoverish 
each other. Both are in labor to become significant of 
his claims, and yet at best can be but feebly eloquent of 
the grandeur of our subject. 

We must not overlook, and yet we cannot dwell upon, his 
advent. Atonement was the burden of his mission, and 
without his incarnation, that atonement could not be 
rendered. His assumption of our nature, was the basis 
of substitution, and essential to his mediation. Hence, 
without his advent, the analogy of Kevelation pronounces 
our original defection irremissible. Reparation must be 
made to Heaven, indemnity secured, and dignity restored 
to the law, or man cannot be forgiven. And for this 
event — the advening manifestation of God's Messiah — 
so illustrious with hope and promise — heaven and earth 
were both in waiting, and God and men looking to its 
issues ! 

No marvel, then, that his long promised advent was 
hailed by the faith and piety of earth, as the dawn of 



280 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 

happier days and better things — the fullness of our 
hopes ! 

We cannot dwell upon his character, as a moral 
Teacher — and yet with what intensity and incompara- 
bleness of value is it invested ! Infinite perfection was 
his text book, and the universe the store house from 
which he drew his illustrations. His mission and his 
unction were both from God, and all his portraits were 
colored in the lio'ht and derived their force and vividness 

o 

from the distinctions of eternity ! 

How grandly initial and comprehensive was every- 
thing he said ! He met the children of earth with the 
greetings of a deliverer. His lessons (always given 
with the authority of a well-advised wisdom and the 
earnestness of a deep and yearning interest), rightly 
understood and faithfully applied, are felt to be the 
only true evangelism known among the creeds of 
earth. 

We cannot dwell upon the temper and conduct of his life, 
preparatory to the one great oblation of Himsef. His 
whole life was a conflict — a course of humbling prepara- 
tion for the cross. When he addressed himself to the 
task of our recovery, the vast panorama of suffering and 
death was spread out before him. All was index and 
preintimation of the great trial awaiting him. Toil to 
begirt and trial to gloom, lay vistaed before him in the 
mighty, the august future. 

But amid the war and darkness of his path, he dis- 
played a temper and resolution which no vicissitude 
could reach or change. Amid the struggle of hope and 
the pause of emotion, a sublime unmovedness of purpose 
sustained him, until, in the progress and evolution of the 
fearful struggle, the garden and the cross awakened the 
raptures of eternity, and the hopes and fortunes of a 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



281 



world without God, were seen paling before the radiance 
of the neglected star of Bethlehem ! 

We cannot omit, no r yet dwell upon th e final scene of his 
sufferings. How speak of the depths of a nameless 
anguish — of the sunk and wasted victim — of the shudder 
and darkness of recoiling nature ! Ask us not to explain. 
For Revelation itself, with all its fullness of light, seems 
humbled by the concession, that, on this subject, even 
an angel's reach of mind, bent on inquiry, asked for 
thought, and Heaven itself grew dumb with awe in 
o'azino' on the scene ! 

How could the guilty offspring of transgression ap- 
proach God without a mediator? What heart smote 
with the intuition of crime, dare dream of this ? In 
vain are the nations seen piling oblation — whether upon 
their own artificial, or the lone and more august altars 
of nature. The awakened and anguished heart, sickens 
at the sight ; and, turning from it and losing sight of all 
beside, fixes on the Cross 1 Faith knows no other Priest, 
no other sacrifice. 'It is here avenmno: holiness bends 
awfully to meet the redress it claims. 

In this last scene of the great sacrifice, what an utterly 
unexampled accumulation of anguish and trial, desertion 
and agony, are we presented with ? The almighty 
sufferer, generously throwing himself into the dread 
Thermopylae of man's moral destiny! Xever did the 
sight or thought of man or angel meet such a scene 
before ! It was a scene for which no lanouao-e or like- 
ness has been provided 1 How God-betokening are all 
the accompaniments of the scene ! The cloud of venge- 
ance ominously ai'ching the Heavens, grows deeper, 
broader, darker ! Insult and torture make up the cal- 
endar of his final hour ! The shuddering hill, from 
which, as from the altar of atonement, he pours his blood ; 
12^ 



282 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 

stands beneath its burden, the trembling throne of deso- 
lation 1 The angel of death is present, hovering over 
the curse and crime, the guilt and doom, of earth. 

In this fearful assessment of human guilt, the justice 
of Heaven launches a frown, which tells of death and 
worse than death to man, but the challenge of the Cross 
arrests the descending stroke, and, disarming the wrath 
of eternity, unbars the gates of Heaven to the believer. 
Here is the title of the Cross to the admiration and confi- 
dence of a fallen world ! Its satisfaction so far counter- 
weighs against the sin of millions, as to bring them within 
the range of its compassion and influence ! We perceive 
that '^the redemption of the soul" was as difiicult and 
costly, as it was needful and ^'precious." And we can 
only add, that so much is our salvation of grace, that 
even the bliss it confers is humbled by the thought — 
assured that never, never, until now, did God look 
down on man and error with a brow so mild 

With the Jew and the Pagan all this was a paradox, 
and it may be such with you. But; if an apparent one, 
with St. Paul, it was one whose verity precluded doubt, 
and whose sublimity reconciled the contradiction of its 
parts ; for, in conforming the futurities of his faith to the 
facts and agency which gave it birth, he saw, in the death 
of Christ, the never failing pledge, that death himself 
should die— and die, too, when immortality was young, 
and its heirs had just begun to live ! 

All these vieivs are confirmed, by the triumphant conclu- 
sion of his visit and mission uj)Qn earth. By the resump- 
tion of his own life from the grave, he gave proof of his 
power and purpose to bestow life upon others. By 
entering the grave, not as a captive but triumphant ' 
invader, he rendered peaceful the retreat and sweetened , 
the slumber of his followers, until the reproduction of the 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



283 



human body from the dominion of death, shall invest 
the sinless millions of the faithful with glory, honor and 
immortality. 

When he rose, death and the grave yielded their 
invincibleness and dismissed their horrors — and the 
Christian finds himself encircled with glory in the arms 
of the one and the mouth of the other I 

His ascension dispersed the gloom of tlie Churchy and 
reassured the heart and hopes of Heaven and earth. Then 
it was he pioneered the way and marked the path of 
ascension for his followers. Then it was a full burst of 
harmony, the joy and homage of rejoicing millions, pealed 
fi'om the temples of eternity, and the echoes of immensity 
brought back the acclaim : The Lion of the Tribe of 
Judah, hath prevailed to open the book and to unloose 
the seven seals thereof!" 

And what more can, "or noed we say ? If we die, it is 
to be with Him. If we live. He will be with us ! And 
has earth a proud aspiring, or broken-hearted sorrowing- 
child, who could wish a better, or would ask a different 
destiny ! 

ly. Let us briefly connect the knowledge of Jesus 
Christ and him crucified, with the condition and wants 
OF MAN. It is this knowledge first conducts the huinan 
under sta7iding to the just apprehension of the principle 
and promise of immortal life. It is the grand mirror in 
which the manifestations of uncreated excellence, are 
reflected to the eye of faith. It is here and thus, 
the Divine purposes are seen, in tho dawn of their 
manifestation, as the pledge of their full and unclouded 
display. 

From this knowledge a heavenly influence radiates, to 
restore the nature and reassert the dignity of man : a 
result the combined wisdom of Egypt and India's lore- 



284 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



lit temples, and all the illumined groves of Greece, could 
never produce. 

Jt is by means of the knowledge of Jesus Christ and him 
crucified, that Christianity enthrones herself in the hearty 
enshrines herself in the life, and plants the pavilion of 
her last abode in Heaven. 

This knowledge leads to a livings sensitive jealousy of the 
Divine honoi\. and proper active commiseration of human 
want. It prompts to the assertion of the one, and the 
relief of the other. It everywhere plants the Cross amid 
tlie avenues €>f society, the collisions of passion, and the 
highways of human pursuit ; and, at every approach of 
evil, its potential interposition is appealed to. 

Deny this doctrine of salvation by the Cross of Christ a 
place in your creed — expunge it from the charter of our 
common hope — and, in every moral aspect of the deed, 
you invest the Heavens with gloom, and, with you, the 
light of life, retiring in darkness, goes out in dire eclipse I 
You replace at the entrance of paradise the angel of 
death. The trees of righteousness wither, the flowers 
of Eden fade, and the river of God is dried in all its 
streams ! We invoke — we conjure you — spare, venture 
not, upon the murderous, the paracidal deed ! Sever 
not the only tie that allies man to God and binds earth 
in communion with Heaven ! Present us not with the 
desolate hope, the appalling vision, of a Fatherless 
world — an orphan universe — without hope and without 
God.'' 

But, we will not dishonor the truth whose cause we 
plead, by a deprecation of its possible overthrow. No. 
The citadel of our faith, amid all the fearful vicissitudes 
belonging to its story, founded upon, is seen rising from, 
the Rock of Ages, fraught with the thunder of Omnip- 
otence, and hailing the hopes of a confiding world ! 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



285 



Even the malignity of hell must be too enlightened to 
dreaan of more than a temporary obscuration of this illus- 
trious truth, Vnich, like the covenant bow of promise, is 
everywhere seen, gilding, to the eye of the mourner, the 
tempest of God's retiring wrath ! 

It may be foolishness with some, and a stumbling 
block to others, even after eighteen centuries of trial and 
demonstration. Many may still unite in the sad, the 
damning mistake of disowning its value ; but, let every 
one who hears us — such at least is our prayer to God 
and appeal to you — let every one pledge himself a martyr 
to the issue, that there shall throb at least one heart in 
the wide waste of human woe and want, that will not 
yield the point of its importance. And should wisdom 
and learning, creeds and churches, codes and nations^ 
abjure it — then, deep in the bosom of that lone one, 
memory (bear witness Heaven !) shall become the ivy 
of the desolation, and around the dear, though world- 
deserted ruin, each wish of that heart shall entwine 
itself verdantly still !" 

The knowledo'e of Jesus Christ and him crucified beincr 
the sum and the substance of the Gospel, the fact of the 
present existence and diffusion of Christianity, furnishes 
the most conclusive evidence, not only of the reign of 
Jesus Christ as assumed in the Bible, but of the Divinity 
of its own orioin in addition. 

o 

In every age and under every trial, Christianity has 
steadily asserted her supremacy of control and influ- 
ence, brightening and expanding from the earlier types 
and first intimations of prophecy — but eminently after 
the resurrection of Christ — into larger and final accom- 
plishment : the grand ulterior consummation at which 
she aims as the Alpha and Omega of a regenerated 
world. 



286 CHRIST CRUCIFIED, THE GREAT DISTINCTIVE 



Witli sin and ignorance, eartli and hell, she has main- 
tained a conflict which has grown keener and keener with 
the lapse of centuries. In this conflict she has withstood 
and disarmed, for ages, the brutal, impulsive malignity 
of barbarism, and the more facile and eff'ective tactics of 
civilization. 

As by the preaching of the Cross" she sent her 
lines out into all the world," the continents of the 
earth and the islands of the sea alike refused her law 
and swore hostility to her spread. Wherever her voice 
was heard, it was the signal of struggle and warfare. 
Deep and dark was the opprobrium which rose up before 
and about her. The world met her mission and move- 
ments with disdain. ISTations jeered her claims. The 
scowl of kingdoms resisted her approach. Everywhere 
reproach and derision were upon her path. She suffers 
the last oppression of the world. And yet she lives ! 
And a flame thus living, upon the very bosom of the 
deep, assailed by every wind of Heaven, yet rising 
above and shedding its efiiilgence on wave and element, 
everywhere battling against its existence, and with 
every form of resistance still enlarging llie ciicle of its 
radiance from age to age, must be sustained by Heaven's 
own fires, and rendered immortal by the breath of 
God ! 

Finally. Still lingering at the foot of the Cross, with 
the deep-seated, impulsive power of a grave and irresis- 
tible conviction, that, vathout an interest in the Gospel 
of the Crucifixion, eternity is lost to man and its hopes a 
curse ; gazing on the vision of its excellence and listen- 
ing to the echo of its triumphs, sublimely borne upon 
the wings of ages ; the question recurs. What part w^ill 
you take in the acceleration of its spread ? 

Will you blend your hopes and your destiny with its 



BURDEN OF CHRISTIAN PREACHING. 



287 



fortunes and its claims ? Will you new and irrevocably 
strike for its glory, and do or die in the conflict ? Will 
you perpetuate the impulse already given, to the extrem- 
ities of the earth ? you combine every element of 
success and all the means of varied assistance, by an 
action without blank or pause, full, systematic and con- 
tinued, until the accumulated and confluent resources of 
the Gospel shall in every place be brought to bear upon 
the moral conquest of the earth, and the glory of the 
Cross burst forth efi'ulgently upon the nations ripening 
for and expectant of the change ; like the regal brow of 
the sun, high in Heaven, endiademed with light and 
rolling his bannered splendor to the gaze of all ! 

The subject is with you. God grant that its burden — - 
the knowledge of Jesus Christ and him crucified — may 
elevate your affections, your hopes and your aims, to 
things above ! May it open u-p and render abiding, liv- 
ing intercourse, between you and the world to which you 
aspire, until the conclusive awards of the final judgment 
shall assign you the glories of deathless beatitude, in 
Heavenly places about the throne of God ; and, in fur- 
therance of the majestic designs of the Cross, give im- 
pulse and extension to the knowledge of its achieve- 
ments, commensurate with the expansions of thought 
and feeling, as, in the range of their combination, they in- 
fluence all intelligence and give character to the whole 
unbounded universe of mind ! 



£88 THE TRIUMPH OF 



SERMON X. 

THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 

"And I heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, There shall be 
no more death." — Rev. xxi, 3, 4. 

[To Mrs. D'Arcy Paul, Petersburgh, Virginia : 

Mr Dear Madam — Some time since, when in Petersburg-h, 
and sharing the hospitality of your house and family during- my stay, I 
found you so deeply afflicted on account of the recent death of an 
interesting son, in the prime of hopeful youth, that, called upon on 
Sabbath to occupy the pulpit of the church in which you usually 
worship, with the view and hope of affording" you some relief and 
consolation of feeling under the deep trial by which you had been 
borne down, I selected and preached the following sermon on the 
Triumph of Christianity over Death. 

The many virtues and the Christian death of your son — not to over- 
look the noble CHARITY he founded, by requesting and obtaining from 
his father the sum of twenty thousand dollars, with the addition of 
suitable grounds, for the establishment of an Orphan Asylum in his 
native city — must be to you sources of consolation beyond any earth 
can offer. The following thoughts on death may enhance your estimate 
of these, and at the same tim.e direct attention to others. For these 
reasons, and others, to which I am sure you and your excellent husband 
would not allow me to allude more particularly, T ask permission, my 
dear Madam, to dedicate this discourse to you. 

Your obliged and faithful friend, 
Sept. 21, 1849. H. B. BASCOM.] 

The text assumes that death is an evil, and tlie as- 
sumption is authenticated by the universal experience of 
all men in all time. Death is indeed an evil — an ad- 
verse destiny — with which every child of humanity has 
to grapple sooner or later. Death is one of the great 
facts of our being — a law of our nature ; and, however 
solemn may be the thought or gloomy the reflection, it 
iTdust, with every one of us, come to this, even this, at 
la^t. Heaven has interposed no alternative, and we 



CHRIS TIAXITF OYER DEATH = 



2S9 



must, despite all hope or fear to the contrary, indulge 
the fearful conception and surrender ourselves to its ap- 
palling certainty. 

The subject is one of such thrilling and overwhelming 
interest, we know not how to approach it. With regard 
to the mere fact, we are without doubt or hope ; and 
yet how strangely does feeling lead us to inquire even 
where conviction affirms ! 

Is it — we cannot help asking — is it true of man and 
earth, that death is the dark and inevitable lot of all — 
that it is not only a doom the past has braved, but as 
certainly one that the future shall : that all, all must 
die — must sink in death nor leave survivor nor heir to 
the wide inheritance of earth ? Is it true that the quiver 
of death is not emptied nor his bow unstrung — that even 
the living are but stragglers from his fold, a fold already 
embracing the unreckoned millions of dead mankind ? 
Is it true that generation after generation is found 
successively placing, by unerring transmission, the keys 
of the tomb in his proud and conquering hand 1 Must it 
be felt, at every step, that we live in the shadow of the 
future — that to-morrow walks in the guise of day, and 
that life itself is but the journal of death ! Are we, at 
best, but mourners in the funeral train, and does death, 
like the personified Calamity of Homer, tread our wast- 
ing hearts, while no sound is heard from his footsteps ! 

If these things are so, and every trial of doubt is but 
to find them tru.e, what must not be the appalling fear 
and transcendent hopes they bring into play. Here is a 
subject involving, not the interests of personal conse- 
quence, or the destinies of civilization — not the tenure 
of earthly good, or the dreams and blazonry of human 
ambition, but the fundamental laws and wants — the 
essential elements and issues — the most interior and 
13 



290 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



touehing relations — the eternal allotments of humanity ! 
Such is the subject, and such our relations to it. 

If, then, the ordinary scenes and interests of life's 
drama fail to turn our attention to the future, its catas- 
trophe cannot. If the mirth and madness — the tears and 
triumph- — the holiday of youth and the apathy of age — 
pride of intellect and prostrated purposes — pomp and 
poverty — rapture and anguish — so strangely mingled in 
our path, do not teach us the moral of our being ; then 
we turn to death — we appeal to the tomb — to the urned 
ashes of the friends we have lost — to the lesson of buried 
centuries, and the dead dust of ages ! 

Do you ask after the purpose of the appeal ? it is, 
that v,^e may point you to that part of your natural in- 
heritance of which death cannot deprive you, the heir- 
ship of an imperishable destiny, when mortality and the 
grave shall be recalled but as parts of the history, and 
among the antiquities of a former state of existence, 
occupied as a theater of action and responsibility. 

In this way, Christianity in theory, and religious feel- 
ing in fact, exhibit a happy admixture of counteracting 
elements — one while burdened with sighs and tears, and 
then rising and swelling in the loftiest strains of celestial 
triumph. And, with these, the one not less than the 
other, we have to do on the present occasion : ''And I 
heard a great voice out of Heaven, saying, There shall 
be no more death " ! 

In asking attention to the significance and application 
of this very interesting announcement. 

We shall. First, notice the original, relative Condi- 
tion AND Destination of Man. After that God had 
created the heavens and the earth — had given to the one 
their grandeur and the other its beauty — he proceeded to 
the creation of man. But, as man was to hold so distin° 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH 



291 



guished a rank in the dignified scale of his unequal 
workmanship, in the wide range of being, action and 
destiny, Infinite Wisdom paused to deliberate, and the 
Eternal Three proceed to his formation in council : 
**Let us make man in our own image and after our 
likeness.'' 

From the circumstances and manner of his creation, 
we infer, that man was destined to be chief of the works 
of God. Uniting in himself, alike, the nameless diversi- 
ties of mind and the endless modifications of matter, he 
is, perhaps, altogether the most surprising effect of 
creating power — of omniscient skill ; and, conabining in 
himself the most remarkable phenomena, and occupying, 
as he does, a position in the center and amid the 
harmonies of the universe, man may be regarded as 
a living type of the worlds of matter and of mind. 

At the time of his first introduction amid the enchant- 
ing scenes of a new-created world, man was constituted 
the high priest of God's creation surrounding him — the 
herald of his being and perfections. The multiplied 
phenomena attendant upon his original formation as a 
compound being, consisting of soul and body, stamped 
upon him the signature of his value, and proclaimed 
his title to preeminence amid the universality of things 
about him. 

Placed, in his primitive state, at the head of God's 
visible creation — intellectual, immortal man went forth in 
the image of his Maker, the legal representative of 
Heaven and earth, the lord and proprietor of all he 
surveyed. His soul a simple, immaterial, uncompounded 
principle of life — derived by direct creative impartation 
from God himself, and intended for immortality — was 
naturally and necessarily indestructible ; and a^iy ten- 
dency io decay, that mav have attached to the constituent 



292 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



parts of different elementary tendencies of wLicli his 
body was composed, may, and, it occurs to us, must, have 
been counteracted hj the special provision which had 
been made for the perpetuity of the organic division of 
his being, upon condition of obedience and fidelity to 
the God of his existence and blessings. 

This tendency of his material organization to decay — 
it being philosophically certain that the different ultimate 
constituents ( f which his body was compounded would, 
by the law of affinity, seek their primitive abodes in the 
elements from which they were originally taken : it is 
probable, we say, this tendency was counteracted, not 
only by a well known law of the vital functions in the 
case, but by the specific influence of the Tree of Life — 
so denominated because of its life-perpetuating, its death- 
preventing properties, and to which man had free access, 
exclusively in view of the continuity of his being as a 
denizen of earth. 

That such were the instituted use and resulting effica- 
cy of the Tree of Life, is fairly inferable from its subse- 
quent interdict. Forfeited by transgression, the Tree of 
Life was banned and guarded by ''helmed seraphim and 
sworded cherubim," ''lest man," in the language of 
Heaven, "should put forth the hand, eat, and live for- 
ever" — which language would be false, as well as un- 
meaning, unless this tree possessed the life-sustaining 
qualities ascribed to it. 

The Tree of Life was the only one, in all the Garden 
of God, interdicted in consequence of sin ; and hence 
the presumption, that it must have possessed the power 
of continuing a life forfeited by crime. Be this as it 
may, the means to guarantee the immortality of man, 
even as a physical being, were every way adequate — 
were within his reach and easy of access. Sin separated 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



293 



him from these means, and death, as the inevitable 
result, followed their loss. 

It would seem that man, originally, was physically 
and relatively constituted very much as we are ; although 
man has doubtless deteriorated greatly in point of natu- 
ral strength, dignity and beauty. This inference with 
regard to the original, compared with the existing physi- 
ology of our nature, is clearly deducible from the fact, 
that nutrition, by a periodical participation of food other 
than from the Tree of Immortality, was necessary to the 
functionary mechanism of life, and an essential condition 
of its perpetuity : ''Of all the trees of the Garden thou 
may est freely eat," save one — the fatal '' Tree of Knowl- 
edge." 

Again, that man possessed the social susceptibilities 
and passions of our nature, and had personal wants and 
appetites, as now, is not less clear from the command, 
''Multiply, and replenish the earth." And hence, we 
may add, there appears to be nothing unlikely in a par- 
ticipation of the Tree of Life, not as ordinary food, but 
as the Heaven-appointed means to secure the perpetuity 
of the human body ; for such participation of the Tree 
of Life seems to have been an extra-provisional arrange- 
ment or contingency essential to his physical immortal- 
ity : and the loss of this provision is noticed by Revelation 
as a most eventful speciality in the natural history and 
moral destiny of the human race. 

The power of adhesion, in conformity with all the 
laws of organic matter, would, in the instance of the 
human organization, tend to counteract the influence of 
gravitation ; and the efficacy of the Tree of Life, as we 
have seen, and, perhaps, other unknown causes equally 
effective and salient, must have resisted the dissolvent 
qualities of the atmosphere, and other kindred agencies.. 



294 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



in their well known action upon the human body, and 
thus render its physical immortality at least a possible 
contingency. 

Thus we see man exempt from all moral evil and nat- 
ural imperfection. We see him the sum and the center 
of all earthly beauty and terrestrial accomplishment, 
and a great variety of causes conspiring to promote his 
longevity even to an indefinite term. And, on this gen- 
eral topic, it only remains for us to reflect for a moment 
upon the dignity and moral purposes of his being. 

Created in the image of God, and pronounced good — 
very essentially good — by the best, the unerring Ap- 
praiser of things ; possessing the high and discrimina- 
ting attributes of intelligence, volition and sensibility, 
together with all the ennobling capabilities of an intel- 
lectual and moral nature ; claiming alliance with the 
throne of God and the hosts of Heaven — had man con 
tinned in his primitive state of allegiance during the 
period of his eventful probation, he would either have 
been continued on earth as a district of God's un- 
fallen creation, or removed to a nobler abode to cele- 
brate in hymns of lofty devotion, and otherwise honor 
and publish the throne and equipage of God's almighti- 
ness, and, especially, the depth and grandeur of his 
condescension, throughout all duration. 

One thing is certain, that, however disposed of as to the 
locality of his being, he would have remained in a state 
of approving association with the God of his being and 
all his happy, intelligent creation. Such, then, scarcely 
lower than the angels by birth-right, was man, when the 
chosen, the virgin soil of Paradise was first pressed by 
his foot, and its fruit plucked by his hand ; and while 
he remained steadfast in his primeval innocence, he 
seemed only created for bliss and formed for delight. 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



295 



staring, gratefully and securely, in all tlie high dispen- 
sations of a Father's love and a Father's care. 

II. But the primeval Formation of Man, his happy 

LOCATION AND CONSEQUENT HOPES, FORM BUT A SMALL PART 
OF HIS HISTORY : WE MUST ATTEND, ALSO, TO HIS REVERSED 

Moral Condition and Altered Constitution. ''Man, 
being in honor, abode not." He sinned. He is fallen. 
And this fatal chapter in his history will next claim at- 
tention, while we reflect upon the subjection of human- 
ity TO THE LAW OF SIN AND DEATH. 

We are now compelled to essay a more gloomy, or 
rather totally different, picture. A picture at which 
'' man's historian, though divine, might weep " — a para= 
graph the recording angel would gladly have blotted and 
given to oblivion. Man, like the angels of fallen mem- 
ory, ''kept not his first estate." He fell by sin ; and 
the anguish of .millions, for ages uncounted, has dirged 
the melancholy truth, that "sin brought death into oui 
world, and all our woe" ! A truth how sad, and sadly 
told, in the destinies of humanity ! A fatal verity, giv- 
ing birth to grief and suffering of every shape and size 
on eai-th — exciting sympathy in Heaven, and voicing 
even the duno^eons of the damned with the oToans of the 
lost ! 

Fain, God knows, would we finish the portrait as we 
began it. Fain would we end in Heaven a story that 
began in Paradise, its early and most significant type. 
But we must not, we dare not, compliment the poetry of 
feeling and fancy at the expense of truth and duty. 
Man sinned, and by his sin placed himself beyond the 
reach of those causes which, until now, had operated to 
secure his immortality. 

Divorced from the Tree of Life and all those benig- 
nant means ordained of God to perpetuate his beings 



296 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



his natural tendency to dissolution and decay was left, 
fearfully left, without check and without control. 

The moment he sinned, therefore, death became a 
part of his physiology — became matter of organic neces- 
sity, as well as positive punishment and arbitrary insti- 
tution. The first obituary ever recorded, told all that 
has since been chronicled of death and the grave. The 
announcement of the death of the first man as the federal 
head and representative of his race, was the prophetic 
record of the doom of living millions— And Adam 
lived nine hundred and thirty years, and he died." This 
sentence is the first line, it is the caption of the world's 
epitaph. Death now claimed the earth as his empire 
and mankind as his prey ; and, in the midst of a world on 
which the eye of God once rested with rapture — where all 
was beauty to the vision, music to the ear, and luxury 
to the heart — in the midst of this fair world, in the spring 
of its glorj^, death erected his throne and spread his 
insignia, and, in the execution of the sentence, *'dust 
thou art, and unto dust shall thou return," he has suc- 
cessively plundered earth of her families and time of his 
generations, and relentlessly dragged to his chariot 
wheels the conquered millions of man. And having, up 
to the present generation, housed them all in the grave, 
he now waves his dark banner in gloomy triumph over 
the undistinguished ruin ! 

In this way, my audience, you and I and all the world 
have become mortal. We have all been shipwrecked upon 
the same sea, and by the same wide wasting tempest. 
ISTor have we yet to learn, what is but too fearfully 
proved by the death of more than twenty-five hundred 
millions of human beings every century, that, at best, 
the *'span" of human continuance upon earth is short, 
and death inevitable. 'N'evertheless, hope has been left 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



US, and if we live as we should, deatli is an appointment 
of infinite benignity to man — an appointment every way 
as good as it will be found to be wise. 

Yet, with all tlie innumerable indications of mercy and 
benignity that surround and sustain us, it must not be 
forgotten, that we are under a partly penal dispensation. 
Our present state is one of discipline and correction. 
The infliction of the more dreadful elements of the curse 
has been graciously remitted. Btit still, for the purposes 
of improvement, our own good. Heaven has connected 
with our preliminary state of being upon earth, the 
parental chastisements of a judicial hand. 

We know, we feel, we are anticipated by you. The 
associations of the subject, of the hour ; the recollections 
of bereavement ; the yet bleeding wounds of grief and 
memory — have already told our message ! We not only 
suffer — it may be long and intensely, and often without 
witness or sympathy — but all, all must die. For six 
thousand years earth has been the sepulcher of life to its 
busy, bustling millions — the vast burying ground, where 
now molder the children of ao^es in undistino-iiishable 
equality ! 

The rolls of mortality^ the chronicles of the long-lost 
dead, and the epitaph of departed grandeur, these alone 
constitute full one -half of all our learning and all our 
recollections 1 Although less observant of it, we have 
as much to do with death and the dead as with life and 
the livino'. Where is it we do not meet with the ashes 

o 

of the dead, with mementos of the departed, and are not 
thrilled with memories of those that ,tcere ! . 

However unheeded by many, the boundless unmiti- 
gated ravages of death are known to all. How many 
in this careless, reckless world of ours, and especially in 
the elder divisions of it, trample upon the long-deca^-ed 



298 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



bodies of their ancestors in the streets and fields ! How 
many tenant them in their houses and dwelHngs ! How 
often does the modern rival of Cicero and Demosthenes, 
in his hurried passage from court to court — or the careless 
ecclesiastic, as he wends his way from the study to the 
pulpit — tread heedlessly on all that remains of the tongue 
of him, after whom he copies his eloquence, and upon 
which listening crowds and senates once hung with 
rapture ! How often does the chariot of the peer and 
lordling, the vehicle of the gay and the giddy, roll over 
the heads of those who once enjoyed the whirl as they 
do ! How probable that the dust which soils the foot or 
annoys the fastidious vanity of the present beauty, who, 
at palace, mansion or saloon, amid all the voluptuous 
intoxication of waltz or quadrille, is seen offering incense 
to the divinity of her own passions, may once have 
bloomed upon the bosom, or sparkled in the eye, of 
some earlier Hebe, as fair and as fascinating as she ! 
The very walls of the apartment where you riot, heedless 
of your random descent to death and hell, may be deco- 
rated with the dust of those who once rioted as you do ! 
And others, in their turn upon the stage, will soon crowd 
and elbow you into oblivion, as you have your prede- 
cessors ! 

ISTow, indeed, every nerve, every artery, every sense, 
may be flooded with life and gladness ; but soon, time 
and disease, decrepitude and death, will weed and waste 
you all away ! And can you be careless, when the scales 
of life and death are thus seen quivering in their final 
poise ! 

Where now are the bustling millions, that, like tumul- 
tuated atoms in an expanse of sun, once crowded the 
streets of Ninevah, Babylon, Jerusalem and Rome ? 
They w&re, and o.re not; and this is all we know of them ! 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



299 



Learn from this, tlien (for all are t}^ed by these), that, ere 
it be long, desolation will walk the paths and streets of 
your now populous domain or city. For life, to change 
the imagery, is a sea, and every human being has to sail 
it ; all must essay its navigation, and all, sooner or later, 
are destined to be wrecked upon its bosom ! Even those 
who hear us now — God of the living and the dead, how 
solemn the thought ! — maybe listening to the last nearing 
wave, that shall reach and settle over them forever ! 

But, gratitude commemorate the kindness, we need 
not despair. Heaven has everywhere shed its effulgence 
over the death-fraught tide of time, and there is a plank, 
the last resort in the shipwreck of life and hope, to which 
we may cling, secure of escape, and assured we shall soon 
be stranded upon the immortal beach of the heavenly 
world ! Thus fearfully is it true, man has to die. It is 
thus death treads out empire and extinguishes the light 
of earth. 

Death, however, does not conclude the history of man. 
Thouo^h mortal, he is still illustrious. Xotwithst^andino- 
all we have seen true of man's earthly lot, death does 
not conclude his history. He is a being highly capable 
and strangely gifted. There is a relative majesty, a 
kind of immensity, connected with the human mind, and 
coincident with human immortality, and this relative 
greatness never dwindles except in comparison with the 
infinitude of God himself. Mature and Providence assert 
the argument, and redemption and the history of man 
prove it in a thousand forms. 

If we beoin with God, o'uided bv our onlv accredited 
notices, man is the third o^rand link in the descendino- 
scale of greatness. Created ''in the image of God," 
with rank and dignity btit '' little lower than the angels," 
he wields a mighty influence over both -matter and mind, 



300 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



over more worlds than one, and has occasioned more 
effort and controversy, and graver conflict in the moral 
government of God, than any class of beings of which 
we have any knowledge. 

Take man, even as known and communed with by us, 
and you will find him as truly of celestial, as he is cer- 
tainly and sadly of mortal, mold. ''How poor, how 
rich, how abject, how august, how complicate, how won- 
derful is man !" 

Amazing counteraction of adverse elements ! Living, 
he dies ! dying, he lives forever ! Mysterious, indeed, 
are God's appointments ! — the discipline and vicissitudes 
to which he has subjected man ! ''An angel's arm can't 
snatch him from the grave — yet legions of angels can't 
confine him there !" Adorable paradox ! astounding 
antithesis ! soon we shall see its consistency and com- 
prehend its force. 

But to return. Let the fearful inevitability of death- 
rendered still more fearful b.y imcertainty, as it regards 
both time and manner — claim our reluctant attention a 
moment longer. Man must die. In the midst of life we 
are in death. Death inhabits all things except the 
thoughts of the dying, here and elsewhere. The ashes 
of the dead ! What do we know of their presence and 
mission — their fearful coextension with things about us ? 
They adorn our highways, fatten our fields, vegetate 
our flowers, supply our tables, float in the cup of the 
reveler, and " support the dancer's heels 1" 

Whether in the unimpaired vigor of youth or showered 
over with the hoary frosts of age, we are alike liable to 
the sudden and unsparing stroke of death. Children of 
mortality — of the dead and the dying ! — think not you 
are the tenants of a castle of brass or palace of adamant, 
and therefore secure. No: you are but passengers upon 



CHRISTIA^'ITY OYER DEATH. 



301 



the perilous, the storni-tumiiltiiated ocean of life, and 
embarked, too, in a vessel of reeds and rushes. Your 
frail bark is now, it may be, gailj careering over the 
billows, impelled by the gentle yet swift Avinged breeze ; 
but the concealed rock, or lowering tempest, will soon 
arrest you, and the dreadful gurge, despite the recoil of 
nature, will claim you as its wreck ! 

You are all being borne forward, resistiessly, in the 
great caravan of hours and days, of weeks and months, 
of years and ages, toiling on to eternity ! 

And can it be that you require proof, where all is 
demonstration ? We know not where to begin. Turn 
to the high places of the earth, the seats and scenes of 
sceptered greatness and palaced grandeur, high-wrought 
festivity and luxurious gratification : are they secure ? 

Look at the proud hopes and cltistering laurels of the 
mighty Julius — prince and pride of all who bore the 
unmatched name of Csesar. But, in an instant, the fatal 
dagger of the inexorable Brutus, sent him from the 
throne and senate to the grave ! Look at imperial Bel- 
shazzar, in company with courtier and courtezan — the 
elite of his empire, from a hundred and twenty different 
provinces — quaffing wine to his gods, in vessels plun- 
dered from the House of Jehovah, amid proud and 
gallant revelry. But in a moment his garland withers, 
his pomp and his viols desert him, a mysterious hand 
writing traces his damnation on the wall, ''and in 
that night was Belshazzar, the King of the Chaldeans, 
slain.'' 

Multitudes are subject to the same law with individ- 
uals. Look at the rich, voluptuous cities of the Campa- 
nia — the luxurious Pompeii and Herculaneum especial- 
ly — with the rival myriads of their pleasure-loving, vice- 
devoted population. Dreaming nought of evil, and only 



302 THE TRIUMPH OF 

of naiad and song — Hybla's thyme and Tempers violet. 
Look at them silent and at rest, at the foot of Vesuvius, 
where sleep had thrown its deep oblivion over the exhaus- 
tion of passion and pursuit. What more likely than that 
the future would be as the past ? What more sudden 
and unexpected than the breath of the volcano, as it 
hung above and the distant thunder began to hurtle in 
the Heavens ! What more unlooked for and startling, 
than the dirge of the burning blast, as the dreaming 
cities awoke to consciousness and instant destruction. 
Imagine, if you can, the struggling rush, the living surge, 
the crushing conflict, the shriek of despair, the choaked 
agony, as palace, shrine, fortress, dome, hall and amphi- 
theater, wdth all of life they held, were sepulchered in a 
&ea of flame and lava ! 

The least thing, ''less than the least," in the hand of 
God, is sufiicient to deprive you of life. Small indeed, 
if we can suppose any, is the instrumentality required. 
Pope Adrian lost his life by a knat. A distinguished 
Roman counsellor by a hair. Anacreon, the famous 
Greek poet, by the seed of a grape. A mushroom de- 
prived the Emperor Charles the Sixth of life, and, as 
history tells, changed the destinies of Europe. Attila, 
'' the scourge of God," met in a bed of luxury the death 
he had fiercely braved in a thousand battle-fields. A 
draught of v^ater, a grain of sand, an exhalation, or a 
night's debauch, are frequently, but too often, sufiicient. 
Support me, then, "Power of Powers supreme," in view 
of that tremendous hour ! Angel of my birth and path, be 
near ; Great Intercessor leave me not ! for, in a moment, 
the harps of Heaven may ask my hand, or the groans of 
the damned wail the dirge of my destiny ! 

Alas! how sadly true, that death, at best, will soon 
arrive to all. Soon, too soon, you will be in the land of 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



303 



silence, Avhere no emulous project will heave the bosom, 
and no creative fancy rekindle the extinguished fire of the 
eye. Recollect, also, that death is not more certain than 
succeeding immortality. Forget not that the soul will 
live when the pulsations of the heart are still in the 
grave. And that as you sow in the field of time and 
trial, so you will reap in the great harvest of eternal 
recompense. 

Would to God we could move you to reflection and 
feeling ! Would we could give you an intuition of how 
rapidly your dying moments are dropping into eternity ! 
Already your shadow begins to darken the dial of your 
doom ! Already the banners of death are waving in the 
night breeze about you ! Life's green tree has received 
its death-blight, and even now its seer and faded leaves 
are bickering in the blast ! 

While we address you, you may feel the pale shadows 
of the sepulcher settling on your brow ! The bloom of 
the earth and the beam of the sky are retreating from 
your vision ! The graves of affection and friendship are 
thickening round you ! Everywhere may be seen at 
rest our mother earth, with her dead children in her 
arms ! 

In this state of things, it remains that we betake our- 
selves to the only remedy left us — that is, seek prepara- 
tion to meet death with heroic firmness and know that 
thus '*to die is gain." Children of sin and sorrow as we 
are, we need not die without hope, unless we so decide 
by our own criminal choice. 

Fallen and wretched as we are, we may yet meet 
death in all the glory of unsubdued triumph. Suffering 
his pains and feeling his grasp, we may say, ''Rejoice 
not against me, 0 mine enemy ; though I fall I shall 
rise again.'* Relentless death, where is thy sting ? — vo- 



304 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



racioLis grave, where thy victory ? Sm alone can edge 
the sword of death and barb his arrow's point. But the 
Christian calmly interrogates the one and the other, in 
the language of triumphant challenge. Land of darkness, 
where are thy horrors ? — king of terrors, where is thy 
spear ? and echo, from the dismayed sepulcher and in- 
solvent tomb, cheers the heart as it repeats the triumph, 
''Where are they V 

Death, then, is not a loss to the Christian — but an ex- 
change. Heaven takes with one hand but gives with 
the other. We plant in death, the harvest follows. We 
recover in death what by life we lose. Death is but the 
means of preferment and fruition, securing perpetual im- 
munity from tears and trial, grief and parting, care-worn 
hearts and blighted feeling. 

Here we see in the most perfect, iii eternal consisten- 
cy, the goodness and the severity of God. We die, it is 
true, but the light and hope of Heaven falls in full and 
cheering beam upon the dark: scroll of human woe ! 

III. The language of the text is that of prophetic 

GRATULATION IN VIEW OF THE TrIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY 

over Death ; and we now ask attention to the nature 

AND DISPLAY OF THOSE PECULIAR PRINCIPLES, FaCTS AND 

Convictions, giving birth to the language of the text. 
The announcement of the text is to be regarded, not only 
as an abstract truth, but especially as applied to the 
Christian and appropriated by him. It brings to our 
knowledge and notice the revelation and bestowment of 
a peculiar treasure ; a treasure peculiar to the Chris- 
tian — the Christian Revelation — the ''Gospel of the 
grace of God," in all its fullness and efficacy. It is a 
treasure unknown in the calendar of kings, unkenned in 
the philosophy of the schools, l^o vision of fabled gods, 
of Eld or Elfland, brought it near. Pythagoras sought 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



306 



it in the groves of Crotona, Plato upon tlie Promontory 
of Suninm, Socrates on tlie Acropolis at Atliens, and 
Cato in his retreat at U tica. It was the great moral de- 
sideratum which kings and prophets waited for and 
sought, but never found. Debated among sages and 
dreamed of by the Muses, it was still an unfound 
treasure. 

Immortality, in every full and proper sense, is a dis- 
covery of Christianity. It is to man the grand Eureka 
of the skies. The Angel of the future brought it down — 
the rays of Heavenly illumination wide diverging as he 
came and imparting their radiance alike to the abodes 
of life and the gloom of the sepulcher. The history of 
nations and the records of all time sustain the testimony 
of the finger of God, that *'life and immortality were 
brought to light by the Gospel." 

Here is the charter of our hopes and the source of their 
origination. Here is the foundation of that citadel which 
the fall of the universe cannot shake nor the waste of its 
ages impair. It is this associates the attributes of God 
with the feelings of men. The mind gradually expands 
with its elevation, until, imaging forth the beauty and 
grandeur of the Almighty, it mingles with the uni- 
verse ! 

Until this revelation of the Divine will, wide over a 
vv^orld, without hope and without God, the starless night 
of moral darkness gloomed. Futurity, with its visions 
of grandeur, was to man an unknown void — an appall- 
ing, impenetrable gloom. Death was the dark period of 
human existence, and all after, an eternal, dreamless 
sleep. The grave, instead of being the treasury of 
Heaven for the preservation and reproduction of the hu- 
man body, vras the great, the damning extinguisher of 
human hope and human happiness. 
13^ 



306 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



During these ages of doubt and gloom, the destinies 
of the universe seemed to tremble in the balance, and 
man everywhere groped in darkness — soul-sickening, 
hope-excluding. It was the death of Christ, fulfilling 
the purposes of his advent and life, that gave birth and 
tone to the hope of recovery. It was then the world re- 
ceived the elements of its regeneration. Here miscon- 
ception seems to be impossible. All nature bore testi- 
mony to the majesty and immensity of the achievement. 
In a manner unwitnessed before or since, earth espoused 
her Maker's cause against the revolt of her children ; the 
indignant Heavens took up the quarrel of his wrongs ; 
the astonished grave gave up the wondering dead ; and 
shuddering hell, even, murmured her sullen but admir- 
ing homage ! 

That this revelation of the loill and mercy of God, in re- 
lationto our fallen world^ r^iay he available to the purposes 
of human recovery, there rtiust he corresponding conviction 
and effort on the part of man. Faith in Christ — an appeal 
for mercy to the blood of the everlasting covenant — for- 
giveness sought on the ground of atonement — the world's 
redemption by Jesus Christ — prayer for the light and 
help of the Holy Spirit : such faith and appeal are indis- / 
pensable. Revelation everywhere makes faith especially 
the grand distinguishing condition of eligibility to eter- 
nal life. 

Faith to this effect implies a just apprehension — a 
discriminating appreciation — of the character and perfec- 
tions of God, as essential to its very nature. \^The histo- 
ry of redemption and the administration of the Spirit, 
must be understood, felt and relied upon, as veritable 
facts. A sense of ruin and thirst for recovery must give 
to the soul new hopes and higher aims. Repentance, 
turning to God, acceptance with him and perpetual search 



CHRI6T1AXITY OVER DEATH, 



307 



after him, must color and dignify the Tralks of life. And 
thus faith becomes the strand medium throuo^h which 
Christianity sheds its select influence upon our fallen na- 
ture and prepares us for death. 

It is the only preparation for death known to Christi- 
anity ; and every opposing theory, sanctioned though it 
may be even by the canonized formula of the most lordly 
Leviticum, must be spurious and apocryphal, unless we 
treat the Bible as a lie and a cheat. The work of grace — 
of God — in the heart of man, can be accomplished by no 
ceremonial observance. 'No external rite, ordinance, or 
ministration, necessarily implies it. There is no fixed 
consecutive connection between the one and the other. 
Judas, divinely accredited as an " apostle — one of the 
twelve," and of course at the head of any ''succession 
you or I or aftertimes may boast, may commune at the 
table of the supper, where the Son of God himself pre- 
sides, and yet be ''a devil." Simon Magus may be 
baptized by apostolic hands, and so ''born of water*' 
as none of you ever can be — that is, by the office of an 
inspired administrator — and yet remain a graceless Pa- 
gan, ''in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of in- 
iquity." 

]!^o merely physical process implies moral renovation. 
This is a Godlike achievement, beyond the power of even 
baptism or the supper. ISTo external means can effect the 
transformation. The boasted claims of priesthood, the 
virtue of the ritual, the efficacy of ordinances, all fail. 
You may seek purification in the Jordan or the Ganges, 
and only be washed to fouler stains. You may appeal 
to Arbana and Pharpar, and all the waters of Damascus, 
and the leprosy remain unpurged. Life, were it possi- 
ble, might be spent in genuflection and rehearsal before 
priest, shrine, book, or image, or in the caves of ocean, 



308 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



performing baptismal ablutions at the roots of the sea, 
and yet the cleaving curse have bold of you ! Tbe blood 
of atonement and tbe energy of tbe Heavens in its ap- 
plication, alone can cbange tbe buman beart ; and 
whatever is offered in substitution, abjures and blas- 
phemes tbe only religion God has provided for our ruin- 
ed nature. 

Another clement in this preparation for deaths will he 
found to he the love of God and of our kind. Love to Gody, 
in all tbe freeness and fullness of a devout affection, must 
become the sovereign passion^ of tbe soul. Love, as a 
common passion, philosophically considered, subdues the 
fear, and is hence said to be stronger than death. And 
this view of the subject accords with fact and history. 
Who is it that would not seek an object supremely be- 
loved, although his heart's blood should ebb in tbe effort^ 
and the vital current stand still at its source ? 

Even the love of country and of kind, how often has it 
urged on thousands, amid the din of battle and the groans 
of the dying, seas of blood and fields of carnage, to rescue 
the one from danger and vindicate the injured rights of the 
other ! What, for example, did the brave Leonidas care 
for death, when he immortalized the Passage of Ther- 
mopylae by a courage seldom equalled and never sur- 
passed 1 What did Hannibal care for death, when his 
armies hung, like the tempests of Heaven, upon the de- 
clivities of the Alps ! What did Alexander care for 
death, when he leaped into the Granicus with the banner 
of Macedon waving over his head ! What did Cyrus 
care for death, when, in his scythed chariot and sur- 
rounded by his spearmen, be rushed forward to battle 
and danger, glory and conquest ! What did the heroic 
Prince of JSTaphthali care for death, when, at the siege of 
Jerusalem, he spurred his barb up the mountain paths 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH » 



309 



of Galilee/' to meet the incursions of tlie Roman 
Eagle ! 

And if love in these and kindred particulars — in in- 
stances of merely earthlj' interest — can do so much, what 
is it love to God, the supreme good, cannot do !-^God, 
who is greater than greatness, stronger than strength, 
wise beyond all wisdom, and better than goodness, how- 
ever modified by human conception — and especially when^ 
with supreme regard for God and human kind, the whole 
soul is imbued with the temper of Heaven and fired with 
unearthly abstraction and the love of immortality ! Sucli 
are the hopes of Christianity — such its triumph over 
death ! 

It is thus, amid the last throes of expiring nature, the 
Christian wreathes himself with the garlands and appar- 
eling of immortality, and might almost weep that Gcd 
will let him die but once ! It is thus the spirit leaves 
the body, assured of final reunion, as calmly and 
sweetly as the dying winds of Heaven expire in the 
last-heard murmurs of the Eolian harp ! And the 
impress of its peace and its triumph is left as a signet 
upon the clay-cold features now slumbering in the re- 
pose of death, lovely as the expanse of jasper vraters^ 
seen by John in the apocalypse of Patmos ! Can this be 
death ! 

TV. Let us notice in what way, and to what extent, 

THE MIInISTRY OF DEATH MAY BE REGARDED AS SUBSERVIENT 
TO THE HOPES AND PURPOSES OF CHRISTIANITY. Death, in 

the language of philosophy and the parlance of this 
world's morality, is a debt we owe to nature. In thQ 
language of Revelation, and as suggested by the analogy 
of the moral goveimment of God, it is a debt v:e owe to the 
rctrihutive justi'-e of Heaven, and is the last act of obedi- 
ence we can perform by suflfering the will of God, and 



310 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



the last God requires of us. It is an appointment 
partly punitive and partly graci^ous. 

In th^ instance of tlie Christian, on the one handj it 
exhausts the unremitted part of the original curse — and, 
on the other, frees him alike from probation and pecca- 
bility, the multiform ills and disabilities of his material 
nature. Thus the Christian, by dying, discharges the 
last debt of suffering and resignation, avails himself of 
the infinite good in prospect, and death to him becomes 
the path and condition of entrance upon a widely ex- 
tended scene of Heavenly enlargement. Death, in a 
word, restores to him his original birth-right— the uncon- 
fined improveability and immortal destiny awaiting him 
beyond the grave ! 

Death puts a period to temptation and defection^ affiictio7i 
and sorrow^ as it tvinds up the history/ and concludes the 
drama of h7ivia7i trial. Temptation and defection no 
longer mislead and depress. The world's seductions and 
the sway of the passions are at an end. Sin and sorrow 
are no more. Death becomes the medium of transfer. to 
a state and scenes of unsuffering life and undying glory 
at God's right hand. 

Not that death can in any way destroy sin, or annul 
its consequences ; but, in removing us from earth, it ter- 
minates the conflict between sense and faith, infirmity 
and duty. 

The vicissitudes of earthly trial are exchanged for 
Heavenly recompense, and subside in the rewards of 
eternal fruition. Then it will be seen that the afflictions, 
the thousand ills of life, were but the disguised regards 
of Almighty goodness, the shadows of Heaven resting 
on the vision of earth ! Then it will be known that the 
noblest lessons of Christian virtue are to be learned amid 
the clouds and storms of life, and that the loveliest 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH. 



311 



flowers tliat bloom in the paradise of God, were watered 
by tears upon earth, as the nursery of virtue to man. 

IS'or is this picture more beautiful than true — but a 
Parnassian dream, or the mere hyperbole of feeling : for, 
even here, we know, that, until death shall terminate the 
trial and triumph of virtue, hope kindly irradiates, with 
more than rain-bow hues, the gloom of sorrow and the 
tempest of grief. 

Death ^places the good of earth beyond the reach of the 
vanities and disa.pjjointments of life. We go — God-like 
thought ! — w^here real and apparent are the same. Where 
reality itself is less unreal. Where the veriest vanities 
are vain no more. Where existence shall never again 
be billowed high with human agitation, nor exhibit its 
myriad unsubstantial images of air, its melancholy illu- 
sive ghosts of dead renown and blighted hope ; but the 
manifestations of immortality bound forever the vanities 
of this life with the overwhelming realities of another 
and a better. For the elements and interests of both 
are now seen, for the first time, in actual realization and 
triumphant display. The immunities and resources of 
immortality preclude disappointment. All is triumph 
and beatitude. 

Death under the circumstances 2ve assume, demonstrates 
the power and efficacy of the Gosjk'I. Look w4th what 
unreluctant grandeur, in the felt embrace of death, the 
Christian yields himself to God ! The angel of hope 
and death is present to guide and console. A well- 
defined consciousness of immortal life absorbs him ; and, 
in dying, he feels that he but casts earth's throbbing 
dust aside to put his diadem of deathless glory on. 

He is done with earth. With him all is elevated and 
extra-mundane. The heavenly mansions sweep in his 
.^eye, as the promised sequel of the tears and darkness of 



312 



THE TRIUMPH OF 



earth! As he passes the cold and turbid river of death, 
he sees the splendors of immortality streaming abroad 
and investing his home 1 

Death is necessary to the redemption of the hody^ and the 
final perfection of human nature. It is of death only we 
can predicate the superinduction of a renewing change 
by the resurrection of the body from the lifeless bondage 
of the grave. Would you then share the intelligence 
and happiness, the grandeur and perfection, of Heaven, 
as it regards the entire of your nature : you must first die, 
die to acquire the capacity to do so ! 

Deem not, then, the dispensation an unkind one, and 
hard to be borne, which sows your bodies in death as 
the seed time of life, in order to their reproduction and 
immortality in the harvest of the resurrection, where, 
invested with celestial qualities, free from all corruptive 
change and ungrateful vicissitude, they shall shake olf 
the power of earthly gravitation, and soul and body, re- 
united in immortal wedlock, shall resume their stations 
respectively, and, entering upon an interminable career 
of improvement and recompense, splendor and enjoyment, 
shall maintain reciprocal empire forever ! 

But, what shall we say to those, in the dark and ray- 
less vacancy of whose unbelief the world is without God 
and the grave without a resurrection ! As they retire 
from the former and approach the latter, the last glimmer 
of light recedes and they tread on the confines of utter 
darkness ! 

Their cold and moonlight views of truth and duty, or 
hellward proneness to vice and crime, as the case may 
be, avail them not now. With avenging chastisement, 
these live the eternal ulcer of memory ! JN'ame them 
only to the dying disciple of infidelity, or the unthinking 
wanderer from God and goodness, and the invading 



CHRISTIANITY OVER DEATH, 



313 



reminiscence comes athwart the current of his intuitions 
like the passage of a thunder cloud over a wreck-strewn 
beach ! His whole horizon darkens into gloom, while 
the blasting creations of almighty fear are felt, presaging 
the bitter, unresting doom of the damned ! 

Finally. Death shall introduce the Christian into Heav- 
en — the august pavilion of the Infinite God and the home 
of his children. Here, however, we need not remind 
you, the language of earth and the conceptions of mor- 
tality fail us. 

Words may not tell how the triumph of eternity shall 
break the trance of time, and array the millions of God's 
elect in his own immortal likeness ! How the dwellers 
in the Heavens, and the tenants of celestial scenery, shall 
look forth upon the bright investiture of undecaying light 
and love ! We cannot describe, and why attempt it, 
those illimitable fields of wisdom, light and discovery, 
which lie, in rich and exhaustless reversion, beyond the 
grave — those regions and scenes of grandeur and aston- 
ishment, where the spring of immortal life, spreading in 
boundless beauty and diffusing eternal freshness, shall 
display its unfolding bloom amid the living melody of 
harp and hymn, or, in verdant stillness, throw fresh 
enchantment over the fields and plains of Heaven 1 

Thus we trace the path and progress of the Christian 
until we see him retiring in death, tranquil as the moon 
moving through the deep, still ocean of Heaven — like the 
magnificent sun of summer setting slowly and serenely 
amid the blessings of a grateful world ! With him the 
pilgrimage of life is now closed and futurity opens to his 
eye the radiance of a sublimer state of being, amid the 
successive splendors of which created vision is lost in 
endless perspective : and, assured of a final and trium- 
phant revival from the grave, we must now ourselves 
14 



314 THE TRIUMPH OF CHRISTIANITY OVKR DEATH. 



die, to finish tlie picture and comprehend our own 
meaning ! 

And when we do, and the inevitable death-lot shall 
throw our thrilling gaze athwart the gathering gloom, 
God Almighty grant, that the heart's pervading con- 
sciousness of the triumph of immortality over death, 
may still its anxious throbbings forever I 



THE JUDGMENT. 



315 



SERMON XL 

THE JUDGMENT. 

"And I beheld Tvhen lie had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there 
was a great earthquake ; aod the sun became black as sackcloth 
of hair, and the moon became as blood ; and the stars of Heaven 
fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, 
when she is shaken of a mighty wind : and the Heaven departed 
as a scroll when it is rolled together ; and every mountain and 
island were moved out of their places : and the kings of the 
earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief cap- 
tains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free 
man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the moun- 
tains ; and said to the mountains and rocks. Fall on us, and hide 
us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the 
wrath of the Lamb : for the great day of his wrath is come ; and 
who shall be able to stand?" — Eev. vi, 12 — 17. 

Among all the results of created intellio^ence, few, if 
any, are more remarkable than the well settled, universal 
conviction, as it regards man, that another and very 
different state of things is to succeed the discipline of 
earth, and that the intellectual and moral structure of 
his nature necessarily implies, as consequent upon the 
present, an after-stage of being and expansion. 

The destiny of man most clearly indicated by the 
lessons of nature and Providence, is one of endeavor and 
reward, trial and recompense. All the tendencies of our 
nature, connected with the present and the future, and 
the entire moral voice of the irretrievable past, are to 
the same effect. 

The opinion has prevailed among all men, in all time, 
and we believe with absolute universality, that, what we 
call life, is but the porch and infancy of being, and that 
humanity, even at the mouth of the grave, is entering 



316 



THE JUDGMENT. 



upon a new career of action and development. Toward 

this grand point the human heart has always trembled 
with prophetic intuition. 

With milHons of the children of earth life has been 
comparatively an Eden of satisfaction and enjoyment. 
With millions more, however, it has been a theater of 
/ calamity and suflfering. Still the result has been the 
same, and all thoughts of all men have turned to the 
future and found a common home. 

And among the indications of nature and Providence 
and the disclosures of Revelation connected with the 
future, is the doctrine of the text about to claim your 
attention : not as a sublime intangible abstraction, but 
most momentous verity, comprehensive of issues making 
up the heritage of immortality to man — -issues too vast to 
be spanned by space or weighed by worlds, and accred- 
iting the hopes and fears of humanity in all time and 
among all its tribes. 

The language of the text is big with the burden of 
destiny. In the chapter of which it is a part, prophecy 
points successively to the regal, imperial establishment 
of Christianity, under the scepter of the later Caesars ; 
to the introduction and tyranny of the Papal supremacy — - 
the great Italian Apostacy ; also, to the subsequent prev- 
alence of infidelity consequent upon this defection, and 
the universal war thence excited, terminating in the 
irretrievable overthrow of all power and policy opposed 
to the true, in contrast with the anti-christian Church, 
and ushering in the long promised empire of Christ and 
his saints— the final dominion of truth and piety. 

But the vision does not stop here. Earth's later gen- 
erations and the revolutions of centuries, and especially 
the eventuations of Providence by which they are dis^ 
tinguished, all passs in review before us, until we reach 



THE JUDGMENT. 



S17 



the closing age of the world, and gaze on the appalling 
scene of its final catastrophe 1 

We cannot, hoTrever, examine this subject, in its direct 
and ultimate bearings, with profit to ourselves and honor 
to the God and Judge of all, without some preliminary 
views of human nature, and the moral relations predica- 
ble of man, in the light both of philosophy and religion. 
A glance at this topic is all we can attempt in this con-' 
nection. Hypothetically, then, to examine the subject by 
an analysis of the principles involved — God, as the inde- 
pendent, all-sufficient Creator, might have made man 
originally upon the basis of either of the following ar- 
rangements. 

And, first, he might have created man, as some philo- 
sophical systems and church creeds assume, with the 
purpose of overruling and forcing all motive and action, 
and thus coercing him into compelled conformity to his 
vrill, directly substituting his own power and purpose for 
the self-agency and moral freedom of man, and being 
himself the only and supreme controller of all the facul- 
ties and functions of his nature. 

Or, secondly, God might have made man, as infidel 
philosophy assumes, and left him under the sole and ab- 
solute direction of the powers and inclinations he had 
given him, without counsel or command, check or aid- 
ance, of any kind, leaving him entirely to the tendence 
and driftings of his own nature. 

Or, finally, God might resolve upon a plan of creation 
and constitution of nature, with regard to man, uniting, 
what, perhaps, most men have agreed to consider the ad- 
vantages of the preceding alternatives, and excluding 
what, by the same rule, must be deemed their disadvan- 
tages. That is to say, creating man essentially free as a 
moral agents and yet not leaving him to himself, but ex- 



318 



THE JUDGMENT. 



tending to him counsel and aid, mental illumination and 
moral influence. 

Had man been created in conformity with the first hy- 
pothesis, he had been, so far as we can perceive, a mere 
machine ; and God, by consequence, as the framer and 
mover of the mechanism, would have been alone ac- 
countable for whatever he himself did by means of it. 

Had the second supposition been the basis of our con- 
formation, man, from his highly complex and superior 
organization, and yet limited intelligence — from the ever 
restless activities of his nature, and yet liability and 
proneness to err, and thus mislead himself — would have 
been infinitely likely to become a source of mischief to 
himself and injury to the moral system of which he was 
a part. 

The third supposition, therefore, is the only one of the 
three which wisdom and benevolence would be likely to 
suggest; and it is entirely certain, from the light of na- 
ture and the testimony of Revelation, that upon this plan 
man was created, and is, accordingly, responsible. 

God is preeminently a free moral being, and man was 
made in his image ; and hence the intellectual freedom 
and self-determining agency, the undoubted moral rela- 
tions and consequent accountableness, of man. 

In view of which, according to the Scriptures, God 
has appointed a day, in which he will judge the world" 
of men *'in righteousness.'' Hence, *'The day of Judg- 
ment,'' ''The last day," and "The great day," of the 
text. And would we could direct attention to this day, 
not only with the reason and argument, but with the 
ardor and earnestness, the importance of the subject de- 
mands ! Would we could make it stand out to your con- 
ception, in the firmament of truth, in its own isolated 
grandeur— shining apart, and in peerless attraction, as 



THE JUDGMENT. 



319 



the grand, yet fearful, cynosure of our hearts and our 
hopes ! 

To such deference and distinction, the judgment of 
'^the great day'' is obviously entitled. For the whole 
system of Revelation, sustained by the light of nature, 
is a compacted prophecy of this day — a copy and anal- 
ysis of its reasons — an essential presentiment of its final 
issues ! 

Approaching the subject more directly, we shall, 
First, notice the day of Judgment, as a fixed and de- 
finite PERIOD, A GIVEN EPOCH, WHETHER AS IT REGARDS THE 

Divine Administration, or the History of Man. It is a 
day to which the laws and measurements of time, the 
antecedent and posterior relations of duration, apply as 
strictly as to any other day or dated division of time 
whatever. 

It is preceded by the days and years of this world's 
calendar, and succeeded by those of another — of eterni- 
ty. The Scriptures everywhere, and constantly, speak 
of it as having reference to the past, as engrossing, when 
it shall transpire, the consciousness of the present, and 
as impressing the character and immutability of its de- 
cisions upon the future. It is uniformly represented as 
approaching — drawing nigh — nearing us by the lapse of 
duration ; and, in the language of the text, is said to have 

come " — the angel of prophecy turning your arrested 
gaze to the last great act of the drama ! 

It is a day to which all others refer prospectively, and 
before which all others shall pass in review. A day pre- 
ceded by action and events having a bearing upon it, 
and to be followed by others upon which it shall be 
brought to bear forever. 

And, hence, it . should stand high in our hopes and 
sink deep in our fears ! If we are the friends and disci^ 



320 



THE JUDGMENT. 



pies of the Judge, it should lesson us into a love of his 
appearing. And if not, it should impel us to a cer- 
tain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, 
which shall destroy the adversaries " of the Judge. And 
this, because it is not only the last, the dying day, of this 
great world about us, with all its splendid garniture of 
light and life — but also a period, a process, that shall 
make inquest for the deeds of every day, and the thoughts 
of every hour, of our responsible being : and shall re- 
ceive its hue and character to all the judged, according- 
ly as their lives and principles have been allegiant or re- 
bellious, in relation to the Judge and the law upon 
which judgment shall proceed. 

Without such a day for the purposes of judgment, all 
other days of our rational being would be without mean- 
ing or significance that would distinguish the possessor 
from a brute. All responsibility implies trial ; trial 
necessarily anticipates judgment ; and judgment, of ne- 
cessity, involves the order and method, the time and 
process, of final determination. Without such judgment, 
therefore, man cannot be considered an accountable 
being. 

If, as assumed by both reason and Revelation, man be 
of more importance in the scale of the Divine workman- 
ship, the lofty range of created nature, than the merely 
physical elements and masses and the insentient or- 
ganizations about him, there is nothing a priori improba- 
ble in the doctrine or fact of the judgment assumed, 
although it involves the destruction of the wAld ; for 
earth and time must be considered as inservienmo man's 
more exalted destiny. 

The subject, therefore, should be met and examined 
by you, not with that kind of alert spasmodic excitement, 
which but too often attends its presentation from the 



THE JUDGMENT. 



321 



pulpit, but with the interest inspired by the sober mag- 
nificence of so momentous a verity — ever bearing in 
mind, that, for nearly six thousand years, God has been 
signally summoning the attention of man to its high 
designs ! 

Whatever may be the fearful and dismaying prospect 
of the almighty procedure of judgment, as strange and 
incongruous, can any one doubt — not to call attention to 
other sources of probability and belief — that God can, in 
one day — the great and general day of judgment — re- 
view, with omniscient accuracy, the effects originating in 
the creation of a single day ? The Divine time — that oc- 
cupied by the Creator and Judge — is the same, in Scrip- 
ture phrase, in either case. iS'or do we perceive any rea- 
son, why longer or shorter should be predicated of either. 

Such an event as Creation, or the Judgment, may well 
task the powers and faculties of belief and comprehen- 
sion ; but it must not be overlooked that the miraculous, 
to our conception, is the characteristic of all the Divine 
creations and achievements, and that his agency is al- 
ways to be regarded as an inexcludable part of nature, 
in whatever division or disposition of his workmanship. 
In this sense, and so viewed, all is miracle and wonder ; 
and even life or death is as invincibly mysterious, as any 
thing connected with the Judgment. 

What originally more stupendously absurd to human 
conception, than that death, the inert and powerless, 
should subdue life, the living and the active, and extin- 
guish alike its functions and its energies ! And how 
much less miraculous does it appear, that life should 
finally triumph over the ravages, and subvert the do- 
minion, of death ! The period of this triumph is the 
Judgment : All that are in their graves shall hear his 
voice and shall come forth." 



322 



THE JUDGMENT. 



It is not only fixed that the judgment shall occur, as 

an eventful transaction, infinitely fearful in process and 
issue, but the time of its occurrence is settled by abso- 
lute pre-determination and special arrangement ; and it 
is a day, therefore, not to be averted or postponed by 
any possible propitiation whatever. In the history of 
human consciousness it will arrive, continue its term, 
and, finally, be past. 

II. We notice the day or Judgment as a most event- 
ful PROCEDURE— A SOLEMNITY TVITHOUT PARALLEL IN THE 
ADMINISTRATION OF DeITY, BOTH AS REGARDS ITS CHARAC- 
TER AND ITS RESULTS. Of this is it possiblc any one can 
doubt ? A day destined to cancel the laws of the min- 
gled elements and dissolve the existing relations between 
Heaven and earth ! A day concluding the duration of 
this world's existence and placing its inhabitants upon 
the threshold of another — everywhere subverting the 
empire of the grave and re-producing its captive mil- 
lions for the purposes of judgment ! Such a day cannot 
be conceived of, without sober interest and awed atten- 
tion. 

The arrival of a day which shall wrap the universe 
of man in writhing distortions and dash to pieces the 
sti'ucture of nature about him ;. in which the vaulted 
atmosphere shall be convulsed and earth severed to her 
center ; when the varied scenes of human life and earth- 
ly interest shall disappear at once and the light and 
glory of the Heavens be extinguished in darkness ! — such 
a day is, indeed, an appalling scene, and not to be look- 
ed upon, even in prospect, without dismay ! 

Hence Revelation depicts the judgment of the last 
day, as a crisis more awful than thought can reach or 
language paint — the catastrophe of evil, not less than the 
consummation of good, to the attendant millions of Heav- 



THE JUDGMENT. 



323 



en, earth and hell, present for the purposes of judg- 
ment. 

This day, terminates alike the dispensations and deal- 
ings of Heaven in relation to our fallen planet. All 
contingent relation, all covenant connection, between 
God and man, for the purposes of amendment, are at an 
end, and cease forever. The course of human trial, as 
well as of nature, is fulfilled ; the dispensations of grace 
have expired, and the circle of God's Providence is com- 
pleted. Man, as it regards trial and virtue, has passed 
his transition state. Probation belongs to the past, not 
the present, or the future. Unalterable necessity and 
changeless fate, have received their seal, and commenced 
their reign ! And thus the day of Judgment is not only 
a most eventful epoch in the annals of our revolted 
planet, as the great homestead of humanity, but such 
in the higher history and destinies of mind and the 
eternal sum of ao^es. 

o 

Do you doubt, as often suggested by infidelity, wheth- 
er such an event will occur, and especially whether such 
a destruction connected with our world, as the present 
local destination of man in the universe about him, 
awaits human consciousness ? We must, for the present, 
refer you to the indications of nature, the common con- 
viction of ages and nations, and the more conclusive 
disclosures of Revelation. 

The conflagration assumed, implicates the destruction 
of our planet only, and that of the heavens, so called — 
its dependencies, in immediate connection with it — ap- 
plying only to form and order, not its solid contents, and 
without involving any other member of the planetary 
system, much less the entire community of the stellar 
and planetary hosts, as many have supposed. And to 
I such a view of the subject, even phvsical science inter- 

I 



324 



THE JUDGMENT. 



poses scarcely an improbability. Indeed, many of its 

inductions render it certain. 

Are not the elements of instability and change, decay 
and dissolution, visibly and veritably at work, from the 
center to the circumference of our globe ? What meant 
the violent disruption and ruin of earth, by a deluge in 
the seventeeth century of its inspired history, incontesti- 
bly demonstrated by its superior and hidden strata, and 
unconnected with the more primary facts of geology, 
throughout its entire extent, as known to man ? What 
mean your earthquakes and hidden volcanoes, with their 
seats of action deep beneath sea and land, and often giv- 
ing to one the place and character of the other ? What 
mean your severed continents, and islands upheaved in 
the bosom of ocean, with their frowning battlements of 
rocks and hills ? What mean your subterranean explo- 
sions, shaking earth and ocean, and your more than two 
hundred burning mountains, dotting the map of earth 
with their lurid o-lare and desolatino- lava ? Look at 

o o 

these beacon lio^hts of the conflao-ration we assume — 
these safety-valves of the internal fires of a devoted 
world — and cease to slander truth and nature with your 
absurd infidel dreamino- and darino\ 

o o 

In all time, and among all nations, the conviction has 
been common, floating alike upon the lips of the wise 
and the vulgar, that the world was to be destroyed by 
fire. It is found in the only record we have of ante- 
diluvian story. It was assumed by the Hebrew, the 
Chaldean, the Egyptian, the Persian, the Greek. The 
Stoic and the Platonist dreamed of it. It was taught by 
the Peripatetic and the Pythagorean ; by the ancient 
Brahmin of Si am, and the savage of the Canaries. And, 
centuries before it was sung by Sophocles and Lucan, or 
more gravely propounded by Strabo and Plutarch, it had 



THE JUDGMENT. 



S25 



been distinctly announced by a written revelation from 
Heaven, as tbe concluding scene of the world's eventful 
history. 

It is one of the most familiar, comprehensive, axio- 
matic truths found in the Bible — one of the first uttered 
by prophecy, and one of the last that lingered on its lips ! 
Witness the primeval warnings of Enoch, and the sub- 
lime depictions of the Apocalypse, as found in the text 
and elsewhere ! 

III. It is a Day of Destiny, and its transactions are 
DECISIVE or the Fate, the final Allotment, of the Mil- 
lions ARRAIGNED. After this day, all change ceases to 
be predicable of either the character or condition of the 
judged. All is eternity, fixed and vast — an unalterable 
permanency of persons and things. To all present the 
eternal future, with its hopes and fears, is suspended 
upon a single volition of the Judge, and life and death 
conveyed by his voice. Truth and error, principle and 
practice, receive the hue and stamp of final judgment, 
without the hope or possibility of change. 

Weighed in the balance of judgment, men and angels 
receive its awards, and are left to the reversions of doom. 
All are present before the highest and last tribunal. It 
is the concluding solemnity in the remedial administration 
of the Son of God. It is the final session of Heaven's 
chancery upon the claims and demerits of humanity. 
The adjournment is eternal, and no power or polity in 
the universe of God has after jurisdiction or re visionary 
control. Each receives the summary sentence, " Come 
ye blessed," or " Depart ye cursed ; " and that sentence, 
traced by an immortal hand, becomes a part of the re- 
cord, and sparkles forever upon the tablets of eternity. 

The Judgment is conducted by him from whom nothing 
is hidden while doing, and by whom nothing is forgotten 
13* 



326 



THE JUDGMENT. 



when done. Every attribute of Infinite perfection is 
summoned in counsel, and impartial rectitude metes out 
tlie measures of doom, whether of deserving or delin- 
quency. Whether you have assigned you the thrones of 
Heaven or the dungeons of hell, the award is final, and 
no remorse for the past or plea of amendment connected 
with the future shall be able to change the purposes of 
the Judge, or bribe the recording angel from the record 
of the deed ! The righteous receive their crowns and 
thrones, while destruction, as the wing of the whirlwind, 
swift and terrible, shall seize the wicked — the prey of 
unpitying vengeance, the sport of angry destiny. 

There is no aspect in which the Day of Judgment is 
so frequently presented in the Scriptures, as that of re- 
versionary doom. Revelation is special and minute in 
presenting us with notices and conceptions of time as 
related to eternity, and as deriving its principal impor- 
tance from this relation — being a relation both of connec- 
tion and contrast. Time stands related to eternity as life 
does to death ; it leads to eternity, and is to be resorbed 
by it. Really, the interests of the one and the other are 
the same, and, but for sin, had never been at variance. 

The only quarrel eternity has ever had with time is 
owing to an inversion of moral order by the usurped 
preponderance of the latter and lesser, in the scale of 
human estimation, over the former and greater. Con- 
trasted with eternity, time is limited and dependent. It 
may be viewed as a measure or fragment — a fractional 
portion of duration abstracted from eternity. It is that 
part of eternity's vast cycle with which the brief history 
of the earth, as the residence of man, is coincident and 
identical — and after which the laws and interests of time 
are transferred to eternity, and merged in its all-absorb- 
ing destinies. 



THE JUDGMENT. 



327 



lY. The Day of Judgment is a day of wrath to all 

THE YlCIOUS AND REBELLIOUS, IN "WHATEVER DEPARTMENT 
OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE JuDGE. To all SUcll it is a 

day of wrath, strictly and exclusively. In relation to 
such, Heaven has no blessing to bestow — God no pardon 
to grant. Xone of the acts or decisions of this day are 
remedial. Xo deed of amnesty, no compensative ar- 
rangement, alters character or reverses condition. 

No prayer is heard or crime forgiven. ISTo stain is 
washed or guilt expunged. On this day Heaven forms 
no new friendships — enters into no fresh alliances. 

It is a dispensation wholly penal, and all its issues es- 
sentially punitive. It is a day of precise award and 
peremptory execution. The Judge, impelled by the in- 
exorableness of a rectitude his enemies had set at naught, 
adheres to his every purpose, unmoved even amid the 
cry of despairing millions. Inquisition proceeds apace, 
and, grasping the vengeance insultingly challenged by 
his foes, he will exhaust his quiver ere he pause. 

The day takes its distinction, as a day of wrath, from 
the direct infliction of punishment, fearful and unmeas- 
ured. The lessons of nature and warnings of Providence 
had taught all, that disobedience to the one and the 
other would prove the source and seal of ruin. That 
those vrho gave themselves up to the lawless misrule of 
passion and appetite here, labored under an infinitely 
improbable chance of escaping the doom we depict here- 
after. Unheeded then, these lessons and warnings are 
now accredited. 

Now conscience, in all her gloomy strength, lifts her 
upbraiding voice and lashes them with the scorpion 
troop of long neglected fears. What upstarting terrors 1 
What forecastings of the wrath of this direful day ! 
What images of the past, rising from the mists of obliv- 

I 



328 



THE JUDGMENT, 



ion and shaking tlieir fearful scourge ! What messengers 
from the future, pale with the dreadful tidings which 
they bring ! Mark the intense review — the invasions 
of memory — the burning shame- — the self-accusations 
and restless agonies of a wounded spirit and ruined 
soul — enhanced by the impending gloom of earth and 
sky, and the last thunder-burst convulsing the heavens 
and shaking immensity ! But these are mere intimations 
of the wrath of the Lamb. Sufficient, however, to teach 
the condemned that their punishment is not a mere ne- 
gation. 

No stroke of the destroying angel in groaning Egypt, 
or Assyrian camp, was more direct or less equivocal 
than will be the inflictions of this dreadful day. It is a 
day that will deal a stroke of higher origin, bolder aim, 
and wider range, than aught that crime has ever known 
before. A stroke that will need no commission of sub- 
ordinate execution to bear it home. A bolt requiring no 
ministry of attendant angels to give it force. Nor can 
we shadow forth the might which directs the infliction, 
by aught we know of power in the whole range of re- 
tributive visitation. All sight or thought of waving 
scimitar or girding cutlass — of the trident of Keptune or 
the thunder-bolt of Jove — is lost when our gaze is arrest- 
ed by the uplifted arm of avenging God-head ; one 
untempered stroke from which, one solitary flash of ven- 
geance from forth whose burning throne, will give perdi- 
tion's millions a place and portion so deep and distant in 
the dark profound of hell, that no courier, of even light- 
ning speed and angel wing, could reach them in an 
age ! 

Would to God justice had no such stroke to deal ! 
Would to God there were none thus to be punished ! 
But the vicious and ungodly exist. We meet with them 



THE JUDGMENT. 



329 



CTerywhere and always, in the history of our race. God- 
forgetting thousands throng the retreats of crime and 
crowd the habitations of cruelty. Impiety stalks shame- 
less amid the high places of its reign. Earth is burdened 
with the insulting denial of Heaven's claims, and the 
face of the world is everywhere stained and blurred with 
the contempt and dishonor offered to God and virttie. 

The details of a life without God have left such with- 
out hope. The time for repentance is past. The chance 
for amendment is unrecallable. Hence, Heaven has 
arranged that they be separated from the good for the 
purposes of punishment. The long predestined period 
for the separation has arrived, and Divine justice, 
burning with retribution and triumphant in avenging 
majesty, drives them from the face of the Judge, loaded 
and crushed alike by the displeasure of Heaven and the 
curse of injured millions. 

The whole system of moral relations, as taught by 
Christianity, shows that this could not be otherwise. 
Sin had disfigured and disordered our planet, until it 
had become the great hospital — the grave of life and 
piety — a vast charnel house amid the worlds about it — 
or, invoking other imagery, a fearful volcano fast by the 
Tree of Life. 

All this was foreseen and foreknown ; and the prear- 
rangements of all the laws and agencies of our planetary 
globe, as such, have been, as we have seen, adjusted 
accordingly. Its very structure utters the prediction of 
its ruin, and all its powers and elements rush to the ac- 
complishment of the prophecy ! 

Y. We kotice the Day of Jud&mext as a day of 

WRATH, OPPOSED BY COXTRAST TO THE DaY OE God's MeRCY 

AND GRACIOUS VISITATION THE ELIGIBILITY OF CONDITION 

WITH REGARD TO THEIR FiNAL DESTINATION, ONCE ENJOYED 

14* 



330 



THE JUDGMENT. 



BY ALL THE INTELLIGENCES NOW CONDEMNED. Their desti- 
ny is a self-chosen one. Throughout the entire company 
of the unhappy damned, angels or men, no one is exclu- 
ded the approving presence of the God and Judge of all, 
except on account of his own rebellious choice. 

No pre-decree, dark and dire — no preexisting purpose 
or arrangement of sovereignty, unconnected with char- 
acter and conduct, will influence the decisions of that, 
day. All that Infinite intelligence and goodness could do, 
consistently with man's moral conformation, the nature 
of the angelic polity and the higher principles of the 
Divine administration, had been done, to prevent the 
final aspects and issues of this unutterable day : and 
the principal reason assigned for this high proceedure, is 
the vindication of the Divine conduct in this respect. 

It was the abuse of goodness, beyond any other rea- 
son, which rendered this day necessary ; and the ap- 
pointments and solemnities of this very day are mani- 
festations of a goodness which might have been further 
abused, but for their interposition. It is not goodness in 
Deity to extend clemency where its extension would 
embolden to crime and damage the interests of his 
intelligent creation, by multiplying the evils of defection 
and rebellion. Were offenders permitted to range for- 
ever in the government of God, unpunished, it would 
invite others — worlds, not less than individuals, thus 
certified of impunity from an example before them — to 
throw off their allegiance too. 

The supreme excellence of the Divine perfections and 
purposes, is manifested in nothing more strikingly than in 
the love of order. It is this gives beauty to virtue and 
deformity to vice. It is this opens the door of Heaven 
and unbars the gates of hell. This it was that planted the 
thrones of the one and dug the dungeons of the other. 



THE JUDGMEiTf. 



331 



Limiting, however, our view of the subject principally 
to man, we appeal to the constitution and arrangements 
of nature — to the provisions and bounties of Providence — 
to the wonders and miracles of redemption — to the power 
of conscience and the reign of grace — the long suffering 
of God and the ministrations of his word — to accredit 
the position, that nothing within the gift of Almighty 
kindness was wanting, on the score of eligibility and 
motive, to secure the happiness of man, had he not 
madly chosen death, in the error of his way, the insane 
infatuation of his career of sin and shame. 

It is true of the history of every man, and stands 
connected with the final determination of the fate of all, 
that life was a field not more fertile of temptation to 
evil, than of motives and opportunities to goodness and 
virtue. The better and more hopeful alternations of 
their being were constantly before them — the reasons of 
duty and laws of faith were obtruded upon their notice 
at every step. 

Although the principle of impiety had become natu- 
ralized in the mind of man, and aversion to God and 
duty was all-pervading, still lingering centuries of pa- 
tience and forbearance continued to distinguish and bless 
his lot. God has so cared for our world as to render it 
impossible he should care more for it. He so delighted 
to bless mankind, that, had he blessed them less, it had 
impaired the realization of this delight. He so provided 
tor human happiness in the system of redemption, as to 
r>^nder it impossible he should ever furnish to the universe 
a richer display of his love. The perfections of God 
and the claims of the Gospel so occupied the vision of 
man, that he could not walk in darkness. 

The system of redemption was so constructed, that 
mercy could punish without impairing kindness, and 



332 



THE JUDGMENT. 



justice forgive without the sacrifice of purity. The light 
of nature, and of Revelation especially, enlightened 
every man ; and not only was its effulgence thrown 
athwart the darkness of this world, but its luster, in 
colors of fearful warning, was imaged upon the very 
mists and clouds of hell, to deter and hold you back I 
And, lest man's foreseen appetite for doubt and distrust, 
on a subject so pregnant with endless results of good or 
evil, should lead him to neglect or decline the ordinary 
announcements of Heaven, God has strangely conde- 
scended to pledge his own existence, and has challenged 
human confidence by the stupendous awfulness of an 
infinite oath : As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no 
pleasure in the death of him that dieth." How strik- 
ingly, therefore,, does the Day of Judgment contrast^ 
as a day of wrath, with the day of God's mercy and 
gracious visitation 1 

VI. I r IS A DAY OF WRATH BY WAY OF EMINENCE IN 

A HIGH AND PECULIAR SENSE ThE GREAT DAY OF HIS 

WRATH. Its decisions involve all, and without hope, who 
are not the friends of the Judge. The arraignment will 
include all his enemies, and the whole weight of his in- 
dignation will fall upon them. No one is spared. No 
part of deserved vengeance withheld. Each delinquent 
is sentenced to the perdition of hell in all its eternity 
and entireness, and the whole of Heaven's unmeasured 
anger shall press the hopeless damned. It is a day of 
unmingled and unmitigated vengeance. There is no 
blending of mercy, no gleam of comfort, no vista 
of hope. 

The Gospel was the only hope of the judged, and the 
sin of its rejection has precluded its own pardon, and se- 
cured its own condemnation. God has " forp^otten to be 

o 

^Tacious," His ''mercy is clean gone forever." The 



THE JUDGMENT. 



333 



day we describe tells you of tlie suffering of the lost. 
But, although in contrast with the past, it is as infinitude 
to naught — they do not suffer now as erst in mercy's 
sight. They cry and call for help, but the cry and 
prayer are answered only by the echoes of despair ! 

View this day further in the light of contrast, com- 
pared with other inflictions and displays of the wrath of 
God, that you may the more accurately estimate its de- 
signation as a day of wrath. Look at the elder, the 
continued, and more recent records of Providence, or 
rather Divine justice, and see the fact attested, that 
God's hatred of sin has been fearfully illustrated by its 
punishment in all ages, 

Angels sinned in another sphere — a distant divison of 
the universe—and his curse drove them to the place 
his justice had provided for them when crime, as Omnis- 
cience foresaw, should make them devils. 

The God-like progenitors of our race, amid the loveli- 
ness of their primitive Eden, declined his authority and 
were banished the garden of their innocence, with the 
curse of mortality cleavino; to them, and wei^hino- them 
down to death and the grave. 

The pollution of the old world by the antediluvians, 
was washed by a baptism of vengeance which swept them 
all away. 

The degenerate cities of the ever memorable, ill-fated 
Pentapolis forgot God, and his curse reduced them to 
ashes and left only the sea of death in their stead. 

Egypt oppressed his chosen, and the sun of her empire 
and renown sat in blood never to rise. 

Jerusalem crucified his Son, and ruin sped from Heav- 
en on a thousand shafts to lay her glory low ! 

The Jews rejected his religion, and the curse of disper- 
sion early told them they were rejected in return. 



334 THE JUDGMENT. 

When, in the fourth century, the Church, amid the in- 
toxication of imperial sway, cast o& his fear, a thousand 
years of darkness, blood and death, told her that fear 
was alike the beginning and the end of wisdom. And 
so of other examples. 

All former displays of the divine displeasure, however, 
have been but admonitory pre-intimations of the execution 
of its final burden. The execution of this burden has 
been deferred to the day in question. But the pendency 
of the great trial can be prolonged no further. Forbear- 
ance has reached its term. The angel of eternity has 
sworn, that the interests of time with man shall have a 
close, and the Judge in person ratifies the arrangement. 
Compelled by ages of accumulating abuse and guilt, the 
administration of the Judge can no longer be just with- 
out the decisive infliction of final curse — of utter male- 
diction — even upon the work of his own hands. 

Hence the whole multitude of the rebellious are out- 
lawed from the friendship of Heaven and the fellowship 
of virtue, by proclamation from the Judgment-seat, with- 
out sympathy or refuge — Depart ye cursed.'' And, 
sinking under the weight and amid the reversions of 
doom, they reach at once the dismal gulf, where pathway 
never led to tell the depth beneath, and where the cry 
of anguished millions shall invade the ear like the wail 
of winds or the roar of ocean ! 

The curse, it must have been seen ere this, is not mere 
stigma and banishment. It is real, essential. It wrecks 
every hope and element of happiness. It shall enter and 
possess their conscious being. It is utter abandonment to 
the elements of all evil, in fearful and final combination ! 
It is eternal privation of every thing connected with the 
hope or possibility of eventual recovery. And the re- 
probate throng, thus wedded to guilt by its final curse, 



THE JUDGMENT. 



335 



who, we ask, shall undo the maranatha, or, reversing the 
sentence of the Judge, separate them from the congrega- 
tion of the damned ? 

Who can marvel that, in prospect of such a doom, they 
cry for rocks and mountains to hide them from the face 
of the Judge and the wrath of the Lamb ; or, that they 
should be glad to take in exchange the weight of the in- 
cumbent earth ! But, alas ! the exterminaiing curse is 
upon these also, and they are fast blending in the com- 
mon ruin, already kindling alike upon their own deep 
foundations — the beds of primeval seas and the up- 
turned fords of ocean ! 

We cannot be insensible that, in contemplating such a 
visitation, the most wary calculation must falter, and all 
conception, even, be found in eclipse. But, without at- 
tempting to depict the ritual, may we not, to some 
extent at least, faithfully preserve the spirit of the scene ? 

Thought and emotion are stirred to their depth. 
We assume ourselves present. How thrilling and ap- 
palling is all about ! What realization ! How does 
every thing come home ! The Judge ! The crowd ! The 
attending circumstances ! The majestic array of prepa- 
ration ! The sentence ! The impression ! Did you see, 
or hut feti, the sweep of that spirit's wing, as the Judge 
said Come And ^YhRt plu/tg-e was that you heard as 
he said Depart "! God teach you, as we cannot, how 
only you will be able to stand in the great day of the 
wrath of the Lamb ! 

Yll. It is a day of impartial trial ajs'd award. 
This is shown by its high transactions. It is the last 
final arraignment — the great day of the manifestation of 
consciences — and, as such, a day of dread responsibility 
and the most appalling expectation. Now, for the first 
time, a tribunal may be seen, before which the prince and 



336 



THE JUDGMENT. 



the peasant, the king and the slave, are equal, and whose 
adjudication will fix and necessitate their doom upon the 
ground of absolute equality : for here man stands denud- 
ed of every thing else, and character alone attracts the 
attention of the Judge. 

ISFow you are cited to give account of all the priceless 
wealth Heaven has lent you. God will now avenge his 
murdered truths and violated law. None can elude or 
deceive the Judge. Each one stands listening to the 
high recital of his deeds. Here ' ten thousand actions 
stand against you, the least of which this world can never 
bail. Virtue and goodness, alone, from unevangelized, 
and faith and holiness from Christian lands, are current 
here. The base coin of this world's morality will be re- 
jected with indignant scorn in Heaven's exchange. Eve- 
ry thing is now settled for eternity, irreversibly. Salva- 
tion, in all the richness of its promised issues, and the 
damnation with which it so thrillingly contrasts, are re- 
ceived at the hands of the Judge and discerner of men, 
and the distinct abodes of all, interminable of weal or 
woe, will be assigned in view of character, and character 
only. 

Fearful, terrible inquest ! How overwhelmingly true 
is it, that this will be to the ungodly, a day only of disas- 
ter and overthrow — and with what emotions will they 
view its approach ! What, for example, must be the 
feelings of those, in whose creed God was nothing, and 
eternity a fiction 1 With whom in practice, cursing was 
gladness, and oaths and blasphemy playthings and pleas- 
antry. Who disputed with Heaven the latest hours 
and last thoughts of their lives. 

jNeed we ask such, amid the scene we describe, what 
mean those accents of terror in the deep roll and con- 
tinuous peal of unbroken thunder 1 What mean the re- 



THE JUDGMENT. 



337 



port of conflicting elements, and tliose sounds of dread 
and awe, that come deeply, grandly rolling on ! What 
means that flaming column thrown athwart the Heavens — 
those pyramids of fire rising in the wild expanse — and 
the deep vollied and prolonged explosions from beneath, 
vibratino' throuo-h all their immortal beino^ ! They are 
the preparations of Judgment, and pioneer your doom ! 

The only preparation for trial on your part, has been 
already made. All are present to enter upon it. Char- 
acter alone is the subject of inquest, and all its elements 
are in the eye of the Judge. The princii-lv" the 
Judgment are settled — nature and Revelation. Tne evi- 
dence and the witnesses are present — conscience and 
Omniscience. The Judgment will proceed upon a grand 
classification of moral elements. The process of dis- 
crimination will be conducted, under the unerring scrutiny 
of Omniscience, upon the basis of character attested by 
conscience. 

The long hidden laws of action will instantly emerge 
to light. A hitherto unknov/n generalization will take 
place. A single principle of distinctive simplification 
will harmonize, or rather place in class, all the unnum- 
bered facts of human history. The interminable com- 
pound of human character, among all the millions of 
earth's known or unchronicled story, will be resolved at 
once into two simple elements — the good and the bad. 

Here and now, upon earth and amid its scenes and re- 
lations, the just and unjust are side by side. The good 
j and the evil, trench upon the same line of difl'erence and 
1 contarast. The wheat and the tares grow together. The 
f sheep and the goats are found in the same fold. The 
gold and the gravel roll on in the same channel. The wise 
and the foolish crowd each other within the same locality. 
But then and there we have the period and place of final 
15 



338 



THE JUDGMENT. 



separation. And in presence of the last tribunal, the 
Judge, in nnblenching majesty, will effect a severence, at 
once complete and eternal. What a combination of mo- 
mentous interest and terrific grandeur ! 

The division effected instantly throws an encompassing 
wall of protection about the multitude of the approved, 
while the lost and reprobate throng ''cry for rocks and 
mountains to fall upon them and hide them from the face 
of him that sitteth upon the throne, and from the wrath 
of the Lamb V 

And, «%r the most careful and impartial survey, how 
commandmgiy reasonable does all this appear, in view 
of the premises ? Skepticism, it is true, has always 
ranked the day of Judgment, especially the conflagration 
of our planet, among the most improbable incredibilia of 
the Christian Revelation. In tracing the history of our 
globe, however, from its origin coeval with the heavens, 
until we have counted nearly six thousand of its annua] 
revolutions, we have ever found it under the abiding ac- 
tion of destroying causes ; and, reasoning from analogy, 
we are compelled to assume, that the result will be con- 
formed to the arrangement, and the world undergo a revo- 
tion by fire, as once it did by water. 

The moral analogy, too, in the case, holds with the 
physical. Not only was earth the theater of crime, but, 
by means of the consequent introduction of death, the 
sepulcher and opprobrium of life ; and as such, in a high 
moral sense, the dishonor of the universe. The rebuke 
of this day, however, by a baptism of fire, wipes away 
the disgrace. The hour of triumph has arrived. Life is 
avenged and its triumph complete. From the ruinous 
heap of every grave, there springs a living, undying 
structure, and the wide and wasted earth, late and long 
the death-scene of expiring millions, every where stands 



THE JUDGMENT. 



339 



thick and wavinof witli the harvest-fullness of renovated 
life ! And al though earth itself shall fall, it is only to 
rise and re-appear a new-created member in the great 
family of worlds, when death, the great and only antago- 
nist of life, in the natural history of man, shall be des- 
troyed and banished from the universe of God ! 

The end we contemplate will, indeed, present a fearful 
scene ! Flame-invested heavens ! — a reeling sphere 1 
dissolvino^ elements ! — a world-consumino' confiaoTation ! 

O o o 

must, indeed, present fearful sights and sounds for hu- 
man sense and consciousness ! But it is over — and now 
look at the mass and contents of that pile ! The ruins of 
our once God-like heavens and earth — of a magnificent- 
ly costly, but burnt up, world 1 And yet from this wreck — 
these ruins — there shall emerge, as God has promised, 
''new heavens and a new earth,'' the refulgent abodes 
of truth and righteousness, complete in all possible glo- 
ry and loveliness ! 

Finally : We notice, more compkehensivelt, the pro- 
cess AND ISSUES of JUDGMENT. There vdll be present, 
on the occasion, as subjects of the trial and witnesses of 
the scene, intelligences from the three great, the only, 
regions of the universe in which, according to the Bible, 
they are known to exist — Heaven, earth and hell ! 

The ranks and heirarchies, the principalities and pow- 
ers, of Heaven — the quick and dead — the living and bu- 
ried generations of earth — together with the whole multi- 
tude of the damned — are all mustered in the grand assize. 
Millions on millions — millions on millions — august con- 
course 1 — stupendous tumult ! Who can depict their com- 
ino' too:ether ! 

Were it ours to achieve, by what creative force of 
thought, or miracle of language, could we bring before 
you, in any effective way, so vast, so interminable a 



340 



THE JUDGMENT. 



sweep of congregated existence ! A multitude — a reck- 
oning so immense, so utterly sumless, that all tlie mil- 
lions earth can number will hardly serve for units in the 
coimt 1 There is a magnitude so tremendous, a magnifi- 
cence so unutterable, connected with the event, that the 
utmost power of conception falters, and the strong wing 
of imagination itself drops feeble, imable to girdle the 
compass of the mighty scene ! 

But w^hat are these convoked masses of individual 
and conscious being, crowding the vast expanse of 
Heaven as the theater of Judgment, contrasted with 
other sights and soimds and fearful scenes, from which 
none can turn away ! What eye does not see the unap- 
pealable Judge and his refulgent throne, guarded and 
begirt by thousands thousands ministering unto him, and 
ten thousand times ten thousand standing before him ! a 
boundless amphitheater of living grandeur ! 

Listen to the noise and shaking of the primitive ele- 
ments, and the stormy commotion of the hoary deep ! 
See lightnings leaping from the angry depths of gloom, 
and the thunder-shaft bickering in mid-heaven ! The 
eternal wheels of nature rolling back or standing still at 
the suspension of her laws ! The watch-fires of the sky 
gone out, and the beacon lights of ages extinguished ; 
while darkness grows darker still, amid the waving of 
dread wings, and the coming of mighty sounds, by man 
or angel never heard before ! 

The now unseen, yet all-seeing, Judge will then be seen 
of all ; and seen, too, amid pomp and circumstance and 
terrible attraction : physical display and material grand- 
eur : scenic exhibition and appalling splendor : meet to 
give commanding publicity and circumstantial effect to 
this fearful hour of final and avenging retribution. 

When erst he descended on Sinai, darkness and tem- 



THE JUDGMENT. 



S41 



pest, thunder and earthquake, prepared his way ! Even 

his visit to Bethlehem was marked by signs and won- 
ders — the guiding star and exulting cherubim ! 

When on the Cross, darkness enveloped, and trembling 
seized, the earth, and nature, in sympathy with the 
great Atoner, threw her sorrows round the scene ! 

His rising from the dead attracted angel visits to his 
tomb ; nor could he ascend to Heaven without the char- 
iots of God marshaling by thousands their splendors in 
his train ! 

And how much more, then, shal the day of universal 
summoning and eternal Judgment I e graced and aggran- 
dized by the glories of creation, clustering on the gaze 
of the immortal tribes everywhere crowding the area of 
Judgment ! 

Let the spectator, who may have no interest in this 
day, if such be found, speculate curiously and unmoved 
upon the giant wreck of a dismantled world, and the 
broken slumber of its ages, while mingled smoke and 
conflaoTation fill the horizon of the heavens, and roll the 
vast volume of desolation over earth and sea ! This 
might, perhaps, be borne by such an one. And, in the 
instance of the just and good, God may support, and his 
grace sustain. But, in the case of those by whom God has 
been rejected and his grace set at naught, who will sup- 
port — what sustain — when the guilty ear catches the note 
of doom, pealing the remembrance of transgression and 
the summons of vengeance ! When lightning shall scorch 
and thunder try the soul ! When the Judge shall grasp 
the balance of the skies, and crime incline the eternal 
scale against all future hope ! When even the accusing 
angel shall resign his office, and angry destiny begin to 
unfold its unutterable hell of anguish and despair ! 

What means that bitter cry of agony, rising from i)^ 



342 



THE JUDGMENT. 



smoldering segment of Heaven's concave, on the left of 
the Judge : Hide us from the face of him that sitteth 
on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb " ! Tell 
•us now, can the once cherished pleasures of time and 
sense, or the riches of the universe, still one agonizing 
throb, when the brightest joys of earth are seen paling 
in the light of its own conflagration ! So far from it, 
the heart turns with despair to all that was lost in this 
world, and with horror to all that is awful in the next ! 

Children of ungod iness ! Outcasts of eternity ! It 
is your last, and Ti^ae's farewell, gaze on the world's 
receding drama ! A ad no star floats in all the lurid 
gloom to cheer the dying eye, or tell of coming hope ! 

Where, now, are the indifi'erence and audacity of crime ? 
Stand up, now, ye chiefs of atheism and sensuality ! 
Throw your eye athwart the amazing vast unbosomed to 
your view, and listen to the howl of doomed impiety 
already startling the midnight of hell ! 

Stand up, now, ye haughty but dark priests of erring 
science, who, excluding God from nature and his works, 
made the mechanism of the universe the meaningless 
result of immeaning chance, and, worshiping second 
causes, insanely denied a First ! Call, now, on your god- 
less oracles, and let them tell you who shall be able to 
stand " 1 

Blasphemer and scofi'er ! Lift up your heads, scathed 
by lightning and canopied by thunder-folds, and let the 
burial-places of memory cast up your cursing and your 
mockery ! As ye loved cursing and contempt, stand 
out, now, in the visible accursedness and infamy of your 
choice ! 

Let the skeptic, in this final trial of his boasted unbe- 
lief, parley now with the thunder-peal and trumpet-blast, 
as, erewhile, he was seen parleying with sin and hell ! 



THE JUDGMENT. 



343 



Let the prayerless buffoon come forward now, and 
tell us tlie value of a life spent only in learning liow to 
play the fool ! 

Ye princes and plenipotentiaries of intellect, wlio, 
dictating knowledge to others, never knew yourselves, 
look, now, upon your debt of more than ten thousand 
talents, and nothing, not a farthing, with which to 
pay! 

Ye worshipers of mammon — ye idolaters of gain — 
who, disdaining all commerce with Heaven and the fu- 
ture, and knowing no Bible but your ledger, made gold 
your God and gain your shrine — look, now, upon a cal- 
cined world about you ; muster, now, your title-deeds, 
and tell us what is left 1 Alas, of all that once was 
yours, a lost soul only remains ! 

And you, one and all, ye reckless spendthrifts of im- 
mortal wares, look, now, at the past graved on the 
future — the scroll of the one unrolled, and the dust of 
ages swept from the other ! You, too, will be there, and 
looking, but only to see the burning ruin of a world you 
loved and trusted glowing in your eye ! Gaze on its 
desolate magnificence, and tell us what you have left to 
relume the lamp of hope ! Once, amid the giddy whirl 
of folly and the infatuation of vice, you dreamed only of 
mirth and gaiety ; laughter filled the fane, and curses 
shook the throne : but now, every beam of light is a shaft 
of agony — every thought of the past, every look of the 
future, but confirms the discipline of despair, and it is 
hell but to recollect what you were and what you might 
have been ! 

But we can no more. To be worse than this, were 
not to be at all. One word of deep, solemn self-ques- 
tioning and prayer, and we have done. In view of this 
last great trial, who, of the children of earth among us 



344 



THE JUDGMENT. 



or elsewhere, of the present, or any other age, will be 
able to stand ? " God help us well to understand, before 
we attempt to answer the question. Few, very few, we 
are compelled to suppose, if any, are yet ready to do so. 
The future has much to teach us. We all, much to 
learn. 

When time, having held in trust for eternity, the bliss 
and the bitterness of earth, its joy and its sorrow, shall 
render up his dreadful seal, and his last shadows eclipse 
its waning light — when invading ruin shall go abroad in 
avenging visitation upon the the theater of crime — when 
grave and sepulcher, sea and desert, amid the convul- 
sions of expiring nature, shall yield their dead, millions 
at a throe — when earth, air, fire and ocean, shall blend 
their agonizing energies and close for the final strife — 
when the shock of conflicting elements and the dash of 
ruined systems shall burst upon the ear of surrounding 
solitude as the funeral dirge of a dying world — then, 
and then only, shall we be prepared to say '^who shall 
be able to stand ! 

And then, O then, may God, who made us in good- 
ness, judge us in mercy ! And when the invitation, 
tmtil now unheard and unuttered, shall echo through 
the height and breadth of Heaven, Come, ye blessed,'^ 
and every place in the universe, hell only excepted, 
shall repeat the sentence, ''Depart, ye cursed" — and 
the uncircum scribed energy of creative might shall pro- 
ceed to complete the stupendous drama by remolding 
the ashes of the desolation, and once more giving earth, 
rekindled and resphered, her wonted place and primal 
signs among the stars and worlds of God — then may 
we blend with those who emboss the burning path 
of the Judge on his return to the Heaven he had 
left! 



THE JUDGMENT. 



345 



j^nd now, finding onrselyes within an infinite cir- 
cumference of action and enjoyment — of which God is 
the center, while Heaven's immortal millions share the 
attraction of the scene — let the years of eternity roll on : 
for there, and to us, they roll only in beauty and in bril- 
liance ! 



346 



HEAVEN. 



SERMON XII. 

HEAVEN. 

" After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man 
could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and 
tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed 
•with white robes, and palms in their hands ; and cried with a 
loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood around 
about tl^ .}i^'one, and about the elders and the four beasts, and 
fell before the throne on their faces, and worshiped God, say- 
ing. Amen : Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, 
and honor, and power, and might, he unto our God for ever and 
ever. Amen. And one of the elders answered, saying unto me. 
What are these which are arrayed in white robes ? and whence 
came they ? And I said unto him. Sir, thou knowest. And he 
said to me, These are they which come out of great tribulation, 
and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and 
serve him day and night in his temple : and he that sitteth 
on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on 
them, nor any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the 
throne, shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living foun- 
tains of waters : and God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes." — Rev. vii, 9 — 17. 

Somewhere in the immensity of being, we are all des- 
tined to find an everlasting home. Eternity, with its 
vastness and its issues, lies before us ; and that eternity, 
as it rolls, is seen deciding and unfolding the destinies of 
intellio-ence. All the ao-es, therefore, of the eternal fu- 
ture, must be to every one of us, replete with good or 
evil ; and whatever may be our dreaming with regard to 
the amazing vast — the unknown somewhere, spread 
out before us — one thing is certain, thither we are 



HEAVEN. 



347 



rapidly hastening, and tliere we shall soon find our 
selves. 

What question then so important, as that which re- 
lates to our leaving life with unfearing certainty of a 
better state of things, when done with time and the fel- 
lowship of earth. 

That there is another and a lovelier world in the dis- 
tance from us, is an opinion, a conviction, that has been 
cherished and consecrated by the universal consent of 
ao-es and nations. It is a truth which has lived in the 

o 

hopes and floated through the language of all the tongues 
and tribes of our kind. And to this grateful topic we 
now iuA'ite your attention, in a few remarks upon the 
future happiness — the reversionary inheritance — of the vir- 
tuous and good. 

Universal space — if indeed it can be adumbrated at 
all — is the symbol of God's omnipresence ; and, included 
within this mighty circuit, there must be some given 
limits within which the just and the faithful shall be 
finally convened, to reap the rewards and share the de- 
lights of immortality : where the wise and the holy 
shall meet the God they have loved, and the friends they 
have lost. Where the universal Judge and Rewarder of 
all, shall give to beings, one in aim and nature, one 
abode. 

On this very momentous, attractive theme, at once as 
sublime as it is interesting, all limited intelligence, and 
how much more our feeble share of it, must of necessity 
fail, and we are left, as we proceed, to glory in falling 
beneath the grasp and grandeur of a subject, we would 
nevertheless essay to understand and discuss. 

In asking attention to this subject — involving, as it 
does, the hopes and fears of anxious inquiring millions — ■ 
hopes and fears which have agitated the hearts of all 



348 



HEAVEN. 



who ever lived or died — who, in the long lapse of ages, 
have been saved or lost — ^We shall, First, kotice the 
Heaven of our hopes as properly a place of habita- 
tion OF PERSONAL RESIDENCE, REAL AND ABIDING SOME 

SELECT GIVEN LOCALITY IN THE UNIVERSE OF GoD, PREPARED 
AND APPROPRIATED AS THE DESTINED INHERITANCE OF THOSE 
ADMITTED TO HIS FELLOWSHIP THE FINAL HOME AND RE- 
WARD OF THE VIRTUOUS PART OF HIS INTELLIGENT CREATION. 

From the light alike of reason and Eevelation, it would 
appear, that Heaven is really and truly a place — such 
distinctively — having, like every other place, its neces- 
sary limits and boundary ; for limit and boundary are 
essential to the very idea of place. 

Amid the vastness, therefore, and sectional localities 
of the Universe, Heaven has a fixed circumference and 
limitude, to which the Scriptures definitively apply 
the well-known adverbial restrictions and distinctions 

there" and ''where'' — opposed to here, to this, and 
every other place, except the one spoken of. Its exist- 
ence and designation as a place, are everywhere spoken 
of and introduced in distinction from earth, from hell, 
and every other division of the universe. And if either, 
any of these be a place truly and essentially, so is 
Heaven. 

As truly as earth itself is a place — a territory — so truly 
is Heaven ; or Revelation is an unmeaning mockery : for 
the idea is everywhere incorporated into its very struc- 
ture and language. Hence the idiomatic forms of ex- 
pression—'' in Heaven to Heaven from Heav- 
en ''-*'into Heaven — "out of Heaven.'' We read of 
arrivals there, and departures thence ; of admission and 
expulsion. So also. Heaven is said to be "open" and 
" shut," while ingress and egress, are everywhere affirm- 
ed of it. 



HEAVEN. 



349 



It is a place as distinctly bounded and defined, so far 
as relates to extension and limitude, as country or city, 
palace or temple. It is true, the great expanse of cir- 
cumambient air investing our globe, comprehending the 
lower strata of the atmosphere, is called heaven. The 
hio'her remon of the firmament is also called heaven, or 
the heavens ; and in view of this arrangement, the 
abode of the blest is styled ''the third Heaven," and 
*' the Heaven of Heavens," byway of excellence: or, 
as we are about to consider it, the place of final beati- 
tude for comfirmed virtue, under the universal adminis- 
tration of Jehovah. The apparent exception only con- 
firms the general rule of Scripture designation. 

Heaven, in the Scriptures, is presented and localized 
to our conception, as a ''country" — a "land" — a 
"kingdom" — a " city " — a "temple" — a "house" — a 
"building" — a "world." And hence, appositely, the 
conclusive declaration of our Lord — " Behold I go to 
prepare a "place for you, that icJiere I am, there ye may 
be also." Thus Heaven is represented to be the grand 
theater of rendezvous and residence for all the hosts of 
God, approved by the judgment of the great day of final 
recompense. 

In a high and peculiar sense. Heaven is the abode of the 
God and Father of all — enthroned and reigning, amid 
the affections and activities of the millions of the blest. 
"I will that those thou hast given me, may be with me, 
w^here I am, that they may behold my glory." " Our 
Father who art in Heaven." " The Lord God shall dwell 
amono' them." " Thou that dwellest in the Heavens." 
" Thou has spread out the Heavens as a tent to dwell in.'* 
" This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." "Heav- 
en is thy throne." " They are before the throne of God." 
*' The Lamb in the midst of the throne shall feed them, 



350 



HEAVEN. 



and lead tliem to fountains of living water." Enoch 
went to Heaven with a body. Elijah went with a body. 
Our Lord went with a body. The saints that rose at 
the time our Lord did, most probably went with bodies 
also, as we cannot suppose they died a second time, and 
that their bodies reentered the grave. 

Translation and ascension, in all these instances, placed 
the substantive elements of humanity in the Kingdom oi 
God — the body not less truly than the soul. Even spirit 
must have space and place in which to exist. If finite 
and limited spirits exist at all, they must exist somewhere, 
and that somewhere — say it be the Heaven we describe — 
must be an isolated locality, a place ; and, as such, de- 
fined and understood by the mind contemplating it. 
And especially when human bodies are transferred thith- 
er, as we have seen, with local relations and affinities, 
they must of necessity have a fixed locality, a given 
range of residence and action, in that region on high, 
called Heaven. 

Heaven is a "place of exalted excellence and pre-'eviinent 
gra'ndeur^ distinguished from all others. will make 

him a pillar in the temple of my God." ''Fellow-citi- 
zens of the saints and of the household of God." They 
are without fault before the throne of God." ''Join the 
general assembly and church of the first-born in Heaven." 
Hence also the frequent assumption, that Heaven is a 
"^l^GQ above us, " Every good and perfect gift cometh 
down from above." "We are "born from above." "Lift 
up your eyes to the hills" — of Heaven — "from whence 
cometh salvation." "High as Heaven." "Who shall 
ascend into Heaven ? " " Rose up to Heaven." "Thou 
hast ascended up on high." " Seek those things which 
are above." Our Lord "was taken up to Heaven," and 
shall "come down in like manner from Heaven." " Je- 



HEAVEN. 



351 



hovali came down upon Mount Sinai." 0 that thou 
wouldst rend the Heavens and come down." ''The 
Heavens must contain the Son of God until the time of 
the restitution of all things." 

Such is the great dwelling place of righteousness — the 
home and Heaven of God's elect. With what simplifi- 
cation and yet aggrandizement of conception, does the 
vision rise before us ! 

It is a scene of action and display — the theater of Jeho- 
xatb s immediate majesty^ and the homage and enjoyment 
of those surrounding him» It is a place wide and ample 
as the wants and multitude of the redeemed : and the na- 
tions of them that are saved shall walk in its lioht. 

o 

Owing to this universal truth of natural and revealed 
religion, all ages and nations have looked, however vague- 
ly, upon the great palace of final virtue, the Heaven of 
Christianity, as occupying an immense height, the ascent 
to which is steep and difficult, and upon God as the high 
and lofty one, with eternity for his habitation and its 
hosts his inheritance. 

What a magnificent scene of relationship and inter- 
course ! What field and sphere for the range and expa- 
tiation of thouo-ht ! No marvel a Divine instinct has 

o 

turned the heart of all toward it 1 ''0 that I knew 
where I might find him, that I might approach even to 
his seat." 0 that I had the wings of a dove, that I 
might fly away and be at rest." Principalities and pow- 
ers in Heavenly places." ''The whole family ,in Heav- 
en." " Inheritance of the saints in light. " In my flesh 
shall I see God." " Changed from glory to glory." 
" Steadfastly looking up into Heaven." " Inheritance of 
the saints in light." 

In all these passages and allusions in relation to 
the Heaven of rest promised the faithful of God, the 



352 



HEAVEN. 



idea of place, residence, and action, necessarily at- ^ 
taches. 

Heaven is^ inost prohoMy^ a sensible^ material structure^ 
analogous to other divisions of the universe^ in form and 
substance — one of the myriad worlds of God, all of which, 
so far as knoivn, are material structures. That this great 
and permanent apartment of Deity, is substantively a 
material frame work, an essentially physical structure — 
and not an immaterial expanse of diffused, unconfined 
spirituality, as many have supposed — is not only fairly, 
but, as we think, necessarily inferable, from the fact, that, 
as the children of God, we are destined to dwell there, 
in the palpable material conformation of human beings 
(the proper generic nature of man), with not only souls, 
but bodies. And, further, as we have seen, that the real 
body of our Lord with which he ate and drank after his 
resurrection, the same as ours in its component elements, 
and the model after which ours is to be fashioned, to- 
gether with the bodies of the antediluvian patriarch 
and the Tishbite prophet, are already there, according to 
the Scriptures. Facts, tending, among others, to show 
that Heaven is not a mere immaterial space, or simple 
etherial expansion. The whole language and current 
imagery of the Bible, favor the assumption. 

He who thinks, as Philosophy and Religion have been 
prone to teach, that sin and misery, imperfection and 
suffering, are necessary adjuncts, inseparable from sim- 
ple materialism, or matter proper, and always found in 
connection with it, errs grossly and stupidly. Look at 
the primitive materialism of man, as his body came from 
the hand of God — of the Heavens and earth, pronounced 
good by the all-discerning Creator — of the body of our 
Lord, and of Enoch, and Elijah, at their translation — 
the bodies of the living faithful, at the second coming 



HEAVEN. 



353 



of Clirist ; in all these instances, vre have actual, un- 
doubted materialism, in every possible aspect, Tvitbout 
sin, and of course without any tendency to produce 
misery. 

The same view and reasoning apply with equal force, 
to the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwell- 
eth righteousness," and by consequence happiness, and 
hence excluding both sin and misery. Matter, where- 
ever it exists, and under whatever possible modifications, 
must always claim, and of necessity exhibit, abiding affini- 
ty with other matter. Our bodies, however changed and 
etherialized by the resurrection, or the translation of 
the living faithful, at the same time must always be ma- 
terial, and, in substance, essentially diverse from spirit — 
and so, therefore, must be their place of residence. If it 
be said that "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kino-dom 

o 

of God," it is said also, that the unregenerate soul " can- 
not," and the objection proves nothing against our argu- 
ment. 

Of one thing, at least, all must be certain who believe 
Christianity : that there is such a place as Heaven, and 
that it is a place of unequalled excellence and consum- 
mate enjoyment — whether, to our conception, the great 
habitation of God and eternity, shall present its bending 
firmament and spreading arch, its walls and foundations of 
adamant and sapphire, its streets of gold and hills of light ; 
or be strangly, and, as we think, inconsistently subtilized 
into a land — an intangible world or expansion of pure 
spirit and mystery. 

The sino'le fact, that humanitv, in its unchanoino- ele- 
ments of matter as well as mind, is to dwell in Heaven, 
proves, incontestibly, that the place of its residence is not, 
cannot be, mere unsubstantial space — but a solid, material 
structure. In the supposition we oppose, there appears to 
15 



354 



HEAVEN. 



be something degrading to the character of God and not 
in analogy with the known economy and distinctive uni- 
ty of his workmanship. 

Could we place ourselves upon some mount of vision, 
which would serve us as a turret of observation ; could 
the mind charge itself with the extent, the vastitude, of 
universal nature ; could it so make the circuit of mod- 
ern astronomical discovery, as to be prepared for the in- 
finity beyond — the millions of unexplored worlds in the 
boundless fields of space : what would be the lesson 
taught ? Would it not be, that immeasurably extended 
space is stocked and crowded with innumerable worlds, 
and that these magnificent and yet material structures 
are the abodes of life and intelligence — theaters of mind 
and its achievements ? 

And, certainly, analogy will not allow us to suppose, 
that the favored division of the universe, called Heaven, 
differs in its substantive material from the other parts of 
the unbounded whole. The intellectual universe, as it 
regards locality and relative position, is always found in 
union with the material ; nor are we authorized to as- 
sume their final separation in any instance, not even in 
Heaven itself ! 

The re-organization of our bodies in the resurrection, 
and the corresponding change in the living, necessarily 
implies, that the mutual relations of matter and mind, 
now existing, are to be perpetuated, and that, in Heaven 
itself, man will be as strictly conformed to an external 
world about him as here, and shall then, as now, happily 
blend, in his own nature, the essentially diverse elements 
of the material and intellectual systems of universal being. 

II. We notice Heaven as a StxIte of enjoyment, 

ADAPTED TO THE SUSCEPTIBILITIES AND MEETING THE W^ANTS 

OF THE ENTIRE NATURE OF MAN. It is a State of ivimunity 



HEAVEN. 



366 



from all evil, natural and moral. It is also a state of secu- 
rity from aJl enemies within and without. Admitted there, 
we dwell in the unrailed, unclouded presence of ineffable 
perfection. !N"o enemy can approach — no malignant in- 
fluence assail. We repose' in the possession of all possi- 
ble good, without any, the least, mixture of evil. 

Here all is celestial delight, an infinite diversity of 
good — happiness in its largest meaning and fullest scope, 
with nothing to discount its completeness. 

It is a stale of conscious and untrovMed felicity. We 
shall have within us every principle of essential beati- 
tude, and nothing from without — no extrinsic influence 
shall ever interrupt the current of unmingled enjoyment. 
It is more, however, by negation, than positive description, 
that we help you to a conception of the joys and happi- 
ness of Heaven. We cannot give you any thing like a 
graphic depiction, or scenic exhibition, of the abodes of 
life constituting the Heaven of Christian piety. 

It is a commonwealth where only high and holy natures 
congregate in inter-community, and free from every taint 
and stain, and all the anguish and inquietude of earth. 

The elem.ents of Heavenly eyijoynient^ as ive have seen, 
and would further notice^ relate to both matter OMd mind, as 
found in the nature of man. And believing, as we do, that 
no just conception of the happiness of Heaven can be 
had without proper notice, and recognition of this view 
of the subject, we are disposed to give it what some may 
regard as undue emphasis and importance. Heaven, we 
repeat, is not to be regarded as an unsubstantial region 
of dimness and mystery — of shades and ghosts — of dis- 
embodied intelligence and impalpable entities — a dreamy 
amplitude — a spectral vacuum — a land of spirits only — 
of souls without bodies, and scenes without sensible 
objects. 



356 



HEAVEN. 



Tlie happiness of Heaven does not consist in a substi- 
tution by which spirit takes the place of matter — the lat- 
ter being excluded by the former. The substitution in 
the case, so far from implying the separation of mind 
and matter, will be that of righteousness for sin and hap- 
piness for misery, in connection with the one and the other. 
The true subjective glory of the redeemed, will consist 
in an adaptation of mind and matter to the great ends of 
their creation and the evolution of their appointed 
destiny. 

The spirituality distinguishing Heaven, and upon 
which the pulpit should insist^is not a spirituality of na- 
ture and substance, but of temper and tendency. In 
the former sense, hell will be as replete with spirituality 
as Heaven. As it regards Heaven, it will not be the ab- 
sence of matter — ^the body — but of physical disorder 
and moral defilement. And this appears to be the grand 
speciality and crowning glory of the Heavenly state. 

Heaven — the kingdom of Heaven, is said to be at 
hand — within us : not certainly in its mighty structure 
and majestic proportions, but in reference to the nature 
and influence of its laws and principles, and the moral 
qualities predominant there. It is not by etherializing or 
diluting matter, in any physiological sense, as a part of our 
nature, that it becomes fit for Heaven ; but by being de- 
prived of its merely mortal and more earthly functions^ 
and invested with those that are immortal and Heavenly, 

That the material substance of the human body, may^ 
as a question of fact^, be taken into intimate and abiding 
connection with the spirit and glory of the world above — 
its hosts and its happiness — has been already and incontes- 
tibly exemplified in the person of our Lord and other 
Instances. In what sense, then, as preached and dreamed 
by philosophic and religious mystics, is Heaven a remote 



HEAVEN. 



367 



and mysterious — an inaccessible and limitless unknoTvn — 
somewhere and nowhere — a place bounded only by illim- 
itable space ! It is such, we humbly conceive, in no 
allowable sense whatever. 

Revelation has given to the world above— the Heaven 
of its own disclosures — a ''local habitation and a name." 
It is, whatever may be its extent, or the magnificence of 
its appointments, a veritable abode, and in it are found 
the great staples and residentiary elements of human 
happiness. And imtil removed from earth. Heaven is 
only brought near to us, and we to it, in the high - moral 
sense implying that we share the principles, the love, 
and the purity by which it is distinguished. 

In a word, the happiness of Heaven consists, essen- 
tially, in the well regulated mechanism and functions of 
the highly complex, and yet well conditioned natures, 
admitted to a residence there. 

The recollections and jn'ospeds of the Heavenly state are 
worthy of being glanced at in this connection. The re- 
deemed rest forever from the troubles, the anxieties and 
the toils, of life. The disquiet and infelicity of human 
hfe, are felt and feared no more. They have performed 
the appointed course of trial and are set down in the seat 
of the conqueror, and all that remains, is the review of 
the past and the fruits of the struggle. Perfect sancti- 
ty of nature shall be forever conjoined with every cir- 
cumstance of external enjoyment. 

Among these, there will be intellectual ties and ra- 
tional intercourse — exalted devotion and enrapturing 
harmony. There will be thought beyond the knowledge 
of earth — intercourse with the God-like, good and 
great — devotion worthy the immediate presence, and 
sono' and anthem enhancino^ the o^lorv. of the God and 
Father of all. There will be the gladness, the greeting 



B58 HEAVEK. 

and the gratulation of rejoicing millions. The society 
and scenery, the converse and melody, the sympathy 
and rapture, of Heaven, will regale the eye and ear ; 
while its granduer and magnificence will hold all the 
powers of thought and emotion in perpetual facination, 
amid scenes and visions unknown to the hopes and 
dreams of earth 1 

All the ennobling endearments of social commerce and 
high wrought friendship, will exist in full and unob- 
structed agreement. Heaven's taste and heaven's affec- 
tions — the powers and impulses of true discernment and 
transcendent regard — »will be infused into all. God will 
be there in visible manifestations of his truth and love, 
and Heaven's vast expanse everywhere lighted up with 
the effulgence of his glory ! 

Heaven, as a place of residence and state of enjoyment, 
should always be viewed in contrast with earth. This is a 
state of pupilage and probation, that of dignity and pro- 
motion. Here is conflict, there victory. This is the 
race, that the goal. Here we suffer, there we reign. 
Here we are in exile, there at home. On earth we are 
strangers and pilgrims, in Heaven fellow-citizens with 
the saints ; and, released from the strife and turmoil, the 
bitterness and regrets of earth, are incorporated forever 
with the household of God. 

This is triumph ! How striking the contrast ! How 
must earth and its trials be lost sight of in the field of 
such a vision ! How must this contrast strengthen the 
ties of confidence, and kindle the ardor of devotion ! 

What did Moses care for the perils of the wilderness, 
when, from the storm-defying steep of Pisgah, he viewed 
the land of Promise, imaging forth the green fields of 
Heaven's eternal spring ! Look at Elijah, the immortal 
Tishbite, exchanging the sighs and solitude of his Juniper 



HEAVEN. 



369 



shade, for wheels of fire and steeds of wind that bore him 
home to God ! Look at Paul — poor, perilled and weary, 
amid the journejings and conflicts of his mission : the 
hand that once stretched the strong Eastern tent, or wore 
the dungeon's chain, now sweeps in boldest strain the 
harps of Heaven ! What cared the holy John for his 
dejjortatio, or banishment, into the rocky, sea-girt Patmos, 
when his residence there was overshadowed by the flight 
of ano'els and he looked forward to Heaven as furnishino; 
the rewards of persecution — and what does he now care 
for the edicts of Xero and the cruelty of Rome ! Look 
at the Christian of apostolic and early times, exchanging 
the clanking of his chains and the curses of his jailor — 
the dungeon's dew and martyr's stake — for the notes of 
gladness and lofty anthem pealing from lute and harp, 
bedecked with eternal amaranth ! The load of chain 
with which he went out to meet the descending car of 
his triumph, with its angel-escort, was a richer dowry 
that the jevrels of empire ! The taper that flickered in 
the dungeon of the sainted hero, shot a ray more glorious 
than ever spoke the splendor of full-orbed noon ! What 
are the frowns or the diadems of all this world's masters 
or Caesars, compared with the prospects of such an 
expectant ! 

What has earth of rich or rare — the gems of the Orient, 
the mines of Golconda, the rose and the glory of Cash- 
mere — that must not Avant attraction, and be poor indeed, 
when Heaven's undying freshness mantles, and her eter- 
nal columns rise in grandeur to the eye ! What think you 
Pisidia's martyr — the murdered Stephen — cared for his 
toils, his travail and his watchings, or even the stoning 
of the bigot mob, when the magnificent pomp of opening 
Heaven, with the vision of the Crucified, tranced his 
wondering senses into awe ! The want and suffering of 



360 HEAVEN. 

earth, are exchanged for the celestial joys and service of 
the Heaven, whither we journey. 

III. Heaven is to be reqarded as a final state, 

PERFECTIVE AND CONCLUSIVE OF THE HAPPINESS IMPLIED. 

The purity and permanence of the heavenly state, must 
always rank among the grander themes of Christian 
thought. Man, in the estimate of Christianity, was made 
for two world's — one a state of trial, the other of recom- 
pense. Heaven, as a place and state, is both perfective 
and conclusive of our happiness. Our happiness is 
incomplete, indeed, scarcely commences, until we reach 
Heaven — and when we do, our being and welfare are 
never to be transferred to another region. 

We may not be able to name, or fix attention, upon 
any era in the calendar of eternity, or the succession of 
its cycles, when Heaven's happiness shall be possessed 
in full and finished degree ; but it is always full and 
finished in kind, both as it regards place and state. The 
nature of this happiness admits of no generic change. 
It will, doubtless, be in a state of eternal progression ; but 
it is progression involving increase without any change 
or alteration of moral order. In quality it never 
varies, while in quantum it admits of perpetual aug- 
mentation. 

The laws and economy of Heaven will continue the 
same, but new celestial developments will unceasingly 
enlarge the experience of eternity, and multiply the 
sources and intensity of enjoyment. There will be new 
paths to tread and fruits to gather ; new truths disclosed 
and scenes unfolding ; but no going out, no change of 
state or place. 

Wc infer the truih of all this, as the visions of iyispiratioyi 
reach no further. With the redeemed, reaching Heaven, 
all is ultimate. E'o other place or state is to succeed 



HEAVEN. 



361 



Earth is a state of struggling — Heaven of rewarded 
virtue. The one is a scene of conflict, the other a recom- 
pense of bliss. And after the passage of this preliminary 
state, it is the great after-stage of being, and immortahty 
the term. 

This is the one great inheritance : all before was initial, 
and there is nothing to follovr. Of Heaven, as a place, 
the law of residence is, '-'thev shall go no more out as 
a state, ''the nations of them that are saved, shall icalk 
in tt'' — '• an exceeding great and eierncd weight of 
glory." The evils of life are retrieved, the avengement 
of its wrongs complete, and the tritimph without pause 
or close. 

There will be an infinitely diversified range of excel- 
lence. There will be the new to discern and the bound- 
less in which te> expatiate ; but all will be under the 
same economy and constitution of order and progression, 
without change or transfer. Whether as state or place, 
our home is ''eternal in the Heavens." 

The declared provisions of the Heavenly state, secure 
this result. Heaven will be perfective of our happiness 
as a place, and conclusive of it as a state. ISot that 
Heaven precludes accumtilation, growth, acquirement — 
but because it precludes removal : and a better state of 
things is impossible. There will be intellectual enlarge- 
ment not less than increased enjoyment ; still Heaven is 
the consummation of our happiness, because no other 
or after state shall place us upon the issties of a different 
destiny. 

Here all the springs and principles, the elements and 
manifestations, of immortal blessedness, terminate in the 
perfection and completion of celestial enjoyment. End- 
lessly varied will be the cycle of activity and conscious- 
ness : heiglit above height, vision beyond vision, foun- 
16 



362 



HEATEH. 



tain beside fountain, and, on every side, the glories of a 
horizon inviting fresh survey. And for the very reason 
that the grand and the lofty, the lovely and the intinite, 
will continue to engross us, Heaven is to be regarded as 
the p'reat fulfillment of beino^. 

Our desires and solicitudes are hounded by the accreditea 
realities of the Heavenly slate. The uncreated, universal 
God, is himself the great center of moral gravitation in 
the Heavenly world. The glorified worshiper finds in 
him the vast sum, the immense total, of his bliss. Here 
we meet a boundless ao-oTeo^ation of facts, relations and 
developments, beyond which immortality itself is without 
inclination or pinion to soar. 

No wish of the heart or desire of the mind found there, 
shall either exclude or wander from him. But these, 
together with the fears and anxieties of earth and time, 
shall expire alike in the bosom and amid the wonders of 
Almighty love. 

This view of the subject, is sustained by the history and 
the hopes of the Church. Such have been the hopes and 
the aspirings of the Church in all ages. Abel, Enoch, 
Noah and others, are said expressly to have sought a 
better country — that is, an heavenly." Moses had re- 
spect to the recompense of reward." Enoch and Elijah 
actually went to Heaven, in pledge that all of similar 
character should go too. ''I have waited," said the dy- 
ing patriarch, for thy salvation," and was then gath- 
ered to his people." At thy right hand," said the 
prophet bard of Israel, there are pleasures forever 
more." "I shall behold thy face in righteousness. I 
shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness. I shall 
dwell in thy house length of days, even for ever and ever. 
Thou wilt guide me by thy counsel and afterward receive 
me to glory," **Whom I shall see for myself," says the 



HEAVEN. 



363 



heroic sufierer of the land of Uz. The ransomed of 
Jehovah," shouts the exulting prophet, ''shall return 
and come to Si on with songs and everlasting joy upon 
their heads," Christ says to the ancient Church, in 
prophecy, thy dead men shall live, together with my 
dead body shall they rise," 

The aspirations and confidence of New Testament 
piety, on this subject, we need not quote. The whole 
current of its testimonies, is to the same effect. After 
all he had taught on this subject, with Gethsemane at 
his feet and Calvary in his eye, how impressively does 
the Divine Redeemer recall attention to the Heaven of 
Christian hope as the great end of his advent and mission 
among men. ''Let not your heart be troubled — ^in my 
Father's House are many mansions." Thither myriads 
of earth's sorrowing children are rapidly hastening. 
Look at the gathering millions, as, in crowd and column, 
they fill the channel and cover the shores of the mystic 
Jordan ! How long is it since eternity has known an 
hour, in which was 'not heard the prelude of the Heav- 
enly harpers— they come, they come ! 

The different degrees of glory affirmed with regard to the 
inhabitants of Heaven, not inconsistent with the preceding 
vietos. Perfect beatitude will be the portion of all, but 
it will be v/ith that variety vmicli lends charm and in- 
terest to the ever-varied creations of the universal God. 
Heaven will present an endless gradation in dignity and 
happiness, characterizing all the ranges of intellectual 
life and Divine enjoyment, from the least of all saints, 
up to the highest princedoms and dominions of the sky. 
That variety distinguishing the splendor of the stellar 
hosts, is the inspired similitude of the different degrees 
of glory in Heaven. 

The proper individuality and difference of character. 



364 



HEAVEN. 



obtaining among the good and devout of earth, will be 
perpetuated in Heaven. It would imply an utter rever- 
sal of all the laws of character, and a subversion of the 
mental and moral habitudes governing conduct and 
action, to suppose that Paul and John, Luther and 
Wesley, will present no diversity of reward and excel- 
lence in Heaven. As there are upon earth different 
kinds and degrees of moral worth and goodness, so in 
Heaven there will be similar difference in the kind 
and measure of reward and distinction meted to them. 
Humble and illustrious worth, will both heir immortal 
recompense and fullness of joy ; but, in the case of 
each, it will be the expansion of the principles and 
elements giving birth to the distinctive classes upon 
earth. 

In Heaven, the millions of the unfallen and the re- 
deemed, will take rank and class respectively about the 
throne of God, in conformity with the grade and extent 
of excellence, by which they are distinguished. 'Not 
Bniike concentric circles around a common center, we 
may suppose ranks and grades to fall in and receive place 
and position at the hand of God, in strict adherence to 
the law of actual affinity with him. Moral resemblance 
to God and the extent of cooperation with him in the 
accomplishment of the Divine purposes, will be the rule 
of rank, and the law of relative position. 

There will be many, innumerably multitudinous man 
sions, adjusted to the diversity of character and claim ^ 
as well as the multitude of the saved ; but fullness of con- 
tent and sufficiency, happiness intense and transcendent, 
will reign in all. 

We may imagine circles near, and orbits distant — - 
greater and less nearness of access to the throne and 
altar— while even the very verge of the sphere is occupied 



HEAYEN. 



366 



by rejoicing millions. And yet all repose in the consum- 
mation of their hopes and wishes, and find the grand 
totality and laws of happiness the same to all and the 
same forever ! 

lY. Heaven is eminently a state of triumph and 
REWARD. To estimate the conflict implied, you must 
note the great militant conflict of the Church, the enemies 
and the arms of Christianity. Our whole life was a 
struggle, a conflict with adverse elements. We had 
much, a fearful aggregate, to oppose, and much every 
way to overcome. 

Now that w^e are in Heaven, we have triumphed over 
every foe. Everlasting joy and the ensigns of conquest 
are upon our head. Robes, and palms, and crowns, and 
harpings, but feebly denote the celestial triumph. Here, 
all was struggle and effort, pang and parting, ending in 
death and the grave. There, in fellowship, and reign- 
ing in life,'' with the Majesty in the Heavens, we share 
the glories of eternal redemption," in all the fullness 
of secured possession. 

We ask you tore-look at man's adverse condition upon 
^arth. Man is not a native of Heaven— but an alien, re- 
stored to the rights of citizenship in the great common- 
vealth of the finally blest. His condition was once an 
■arthly, sinful and sufiering one ; but, rising above, he 
;as triumphed over the ills and evils of earth, sin and 
afl'ering. Life was a warfare without truce or interval ; 
lit the victor is now approved, and crowned with 
Treaths, compared with which the chaplets of fame and 
be laurels of empire are but weeds. 

The head and hand, so lately burdened with care and 
oil, are now, like all about him, forever vernal with 
.maranth and palm. The hand once so feeble, now 
Yields a sceptered influence, and upon the brow, but 



366 



HEAVEN. 



now clouded witli soitow, plajs the light of immortality, 
as upon its chosen altar 1 

Ijooky too^ at the resistance the Christian had to oppose to 
the untiring activity of infernal agency.. Strong in the 
strength supplied from Heaven, the Devil, our common 
enemy, who, with unwearied assiduity, went about seeking 
whom he might devour, has been resisted and overcome ; 
and now he may revisit the haunts o-f his usurped mission^ 
and the high places of his world-wide rule, but he will 
find no Christion to tempt, no child of faith to seduce. 
God's elect upon our planet are counted up, and the con- 
gregation of the damned is numbered. Babylan is divorc- 
ed from Jerusalem, and the separation is eternal. HeaveB 
has garnered the wheat and hell shall burn the tares. 

In this way we perceive how eminently the path of 
life is one of duty and trial, instead of being carpeted 
with flowers and invested with repose. And we perceive^ 
further, that we have no right to expect, or even pray, 
for heart and hopes upan earth cheerful and buoyant as 
those we look forward to in Heaven. 

The triumph of the Christian implies his reward. The text 
assures us the Christian is rewarded, because he ''came 
up" with unblenching firmness through ''great" afflic- 
tion — because, in the practice of the virtues exacted 
and the aggressive resistance of vice, he "washed his 
robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." 
" Therefore " it is he is free from stain " before the 
throne of God," and, without defection, shall " serve 
him day and night." 

It is true of all the saved, that, unsought and unasked 
for, the grace of God gratuitously placed them in a con- 
dition to avail themselves of the rewardableness of obe- 
dience and piety, and this in perfect consistency with the 
most conscious indesert and entire want of merit on 



HEAVEN. 



367 



their part. They are now preferred to the glories of a 
state destined to be prolonged in happiness throughout 
all ages. 

In estimating the reward awaiting the Christian, you 
are to take into the account the present and the future — 
the difficulties and the recompense of the Christian pro- 
fession — the battle and spoils of a life of virtue. The 
Christian hero, having passed the scene of trial, is 
now at rest, pavilioned high upon the mount of immor- 
tality, from which memory gilds the past, like the sun 
of heaven, as the tempest retires, throwing his radiance 
over the broken billows of the sea I 

V. The Character, peculiar and distinctive, of 

THOSE ADMITTED TO A KeSIDENCE IN HeAVEN. Fi'/'St, note 

the transformation implied. A great change has passed 
upon them. They have been the subjects of a divine, a 
Heavenly, transformation. Sharing ''the washing of 
regeneration and the renewing Holy Ghost," they, in re- 
turn, by unreserved consecration and active obedience, 
"have washed their robes and made them w^hite in the 
blood of the Lamb." And they thus stand out noticea- 
bly among men, enrobed in character, conduct, life and 
conversation, such as the Gospel requires and Heaven 
can approve. 

These have been rendered acceptable to God, and 
befitting the Heavenly mansions, prospectively, through 
the atonement and propitiation of the Son of God. 
rrom this grand fulfillment of the Cross, and this alone, 
and yet effectively, flowed the redemption of the world 
and its sequent regeneration, in connection with faith and 
obedience. Of this system of recovery, suggested by 
Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Benevolence was the great 
originating agency, and the atonement of Christ the 
grand procuring cause. 



868 



HEAVEN. 



Sucli are the original m-eans and method of prepara- 
tion. Twrn we^ now, more especially, to the indispensable 
terms of eligibility ^ so far as man is concerned. That 
which contingently contributed to the event, and, indeed, 
determined the result of admission into Heaven, on the 
part of those found there, was their assiduous and unre- 
mitting industry in acquiring moral fitness and growing 
preparation for the Heavenly state. So every way and 
always essential, in the instance of accountable man, are 
repentance, faith and obedience, to this preparation (and 
these virtues giving character and tendency to the whole 
of our being), that, without them, as conditions of eternal 
life, Christianity itself becomes, in name and effect, a 
lifeless, defunct creed — an exploded, lying wonder. 

As belonging to Christian character, let us notice the lead- 
ing practical results of this progressive 'preparation in a life 
of piety and usefulness, comprehending all the ordinary de- 
tails of the one a7id the other. Such a life invariably results 
from the great transforming change of which we have 
spoken, unless its tendencies be resisted and perverted. 
It affects all the depths and springs of our nature. It 
sheds over our higher tastes and the sterner principles 
and impulses of our nature the luster of a pure, unsel- 
fish elevation. Our motives and purposes take hold of 
eternity. Eternal things engross and attract thought 
and feeling. Earth is looked upon as a state of prepa- 
ration only, the mere vestibule of being. 

In the great conflict of the Christian profession — as 
good soldiers of Jesus Christ, with nerve to dare and 
hand to do, abjuring self — they battle for God and virtue 
against the ills of life and the powers of darkness. 
They have attached themselves to the distant fortunes 
of one who, when on earth, had not where to lay his 
head ; and, for their reward, they look to what others 



HEAVEN, 



369 



regard as the unknown perspective beyond the grave. 
Busily and arduously, despite all that may oppose, they 
are seen plying the means and processes of resemblance 
to their great Exemplar in Heaven. One is their Mas- 
ter, even Christ and it is their one great endeavor to 
*'be like him " here, that, hereafter, they may see him 
as he is/' Amid all the disturbing vicissitudes of life^ 
with unrepressed fervor of effort, they aspire after Heav- 
enly attainments. 

They act upon the maxim, that, to reach Heaven at 
all, there must be susceptibility and similitude — a per- 
sonal adaptation, on the part of the aspirant here, to the 
kind of happiness current there. Thus, looking forward 
to a better, they wear this world about them as a mantle 
that, at death, they may throw off, and mount to life— 
the bosom of their God. It is their true characteristic, 
that, pointing the road to Heaven, they lead the way 
themselves and ask the world to follow. 

We are thus prepared to reflect^ for a moment, upon the 
hope and confidence inspired hy this mysterious process of 
life. Of this hope we can only say, it is full of im^- 
mortality of this confidence, it is strong and unques- 
tioning. Panoplied in grace and virtue, the Christian 
meets the ills of life and earth's adversities, like the 
moon in her course, steadily moving forward, and with 
firm, unshrinking prow, breasting the threatening aspects 
and stormy billows of the sky, and claiming path and 
finding way, as though they had not been ! 

YI. The Manner of Access and Mode of Entrance 
INTO Heaven. Would you live forever, where sin is not 
and death unknown ? you must first die. In the whole 
system of human recovery, God has ordained that grief 
and trial shall be the precursors of glory and promotion. 
And, in analogy with this arrangement, our entrance 



370 



HEAVEN. 



into Heaven is through the dark valley of the shadow 
of death. 

Death becomes the mode of transfer — the gateway 
of entrance to the land and mansions of immortality. 
Nor is this absurd. Death, in fact, is but existence in 
another form. It is a mere parenthesis in our being, af- 
fecting only its mode. It concludes our earthly, and 
commences our higher and Heavenly, career. Death 
only changes the accidents of existence, transferring us 
from one stage to another : and, of all abodes, the grave 
will be found the most prolific of life and being. 

Child of the storm and the wave ! you are now at sea, 
and would you reach the immortal shore at which you 
aim ? you must first buffet the dark and oblivious flood 
that rolls between mortality and eternal life ! Your sun 
must set in this, ere it can rise in the other hemisphere. 
You must abide the trial of death and the scrutiny of the 
omniscient Judge. 

But, admitting this in all its force, when we mark the 
hopes and consolation gilding the last hours of Christian 
toil and contemplate our final triumph at the feet of God, 
can we hesitate upon the threshold of the only door ad- 
mitting us to his presence and fellowship forever. 

Christianity exhibits several successive stages in the 
renovation and perfection of our nature. The first seems 
to relate, principally, to a just and comprehensive appre- 
hension of the existence and natural perfections of Deity. 
The second eminently includes a clear and impressive 
appreciation of the moral perfections of God, together 
with living, practical conformity to his moral character, 
will and purposes. While the third contemplates our 
transfer from time to eternity, and gives the immediate 
perception and open vision of uncreated excellence, in a 
state of the most perfect blessedness and unchanging 



371 



felicity. Of the two former we may avail ourselves on 
earth ; to the realization of the latter, it is Pxecessary 
that our connection with earth and matter, in their dariier 
aspects and grosser symbols, should be dissolved. This 
dissolution is death ; and a principal part of its necessity 
appears to arise from the fact, that there are certain 
principles of our nature — established laws of our being — 
which cannot be evolved and brought to bear upon our 
ultimate destination in any other way. 

This appointed separation of the elements of otir na- 
ture, for the purpose of ultimate re-construction, and a 
conformation better adapted to the- great ends of our 
beino', is to be reo^arded as a hxed, reo^ular stao-e in the 
economy — the natural history of the moral world. It 
is a special appointment not to be resisted or avoided. 
It is not an arrest — an oblivion — of the intellectual and 
moral life, of which we are now conscious ; but a tem- 
porary breaking up and dissever ment of the organic 
whole, with its elementary parts, for the accomplishment 
of a specific purpose. 

The period of death's dominion over the body, is a 
portion of the natural history of man, of which we 
know but little, beyond the revealed fact that it is a pe- 
riod of seed-time and germination, and that a series of 
results are going on, however slowly or imperceptibly, 
intimately connected with the re-construction of the 
elements of physical life, preparatory to the re-union of 
soul and body in the resurrection. 

To die, therefore, so far from an extinction of being, 
is but a change of its order. It is existence under a new 
form of development, and is gradually preparing hu- 
manity for after stages of being, and the full eflulgence 
of uncreated hght. It is such a view of the subject, and 
such alone, we conceive, that solves the enigma of the 



372 



HEAVEN. 



grave, and gives the true pliilosophy of life and death, 
as brought to light by the Gospel. 

TlXALLY : We notice the nature and elements THE 

CIRCUMSTANCES AND DURATION, OF THE HAPPINESS WE CELE- 
BRATE. God has prepared for the long lost, but now re- 
covered, children of his providence and grace, a dura- 
lion of never-ending bliss. When the wilderness of 
life is past, with its perils and hardships, they are admit- 
ted into his immediate presence, where, through all the 
celestial mansions, he pours himself abroad in blessing 
and in bounty. 

It is a happiness comprehending and engrossing every 
power and every function of an immortal, glorified exist- 
ence — every where delighting in the good — gazing on 
the beautiful and glorying in the vast. 

The glorified humanity of Jesus Christy binding in fer- 
'petuul union the elements of mind omd matter^ shall he the 
visible august Shekinah^ reflecting the effulgence of Jeho- 
vah^s glory upon the millions ichose names are written in 
Heaven. And these millions of immortals throw their 
gaze over the boundless fields, out-spreading before and 
about them, but to learn the great apocalyptic truth, that 
*Hhe Lamb is the lio^it therof 1" He is the burnino- 
focus of vision — the Almighty center of attraction — the 
sum and soul of all the awaiting scenes and unfolding 
glories of Heaven's indefinite, boundless future. 

Owr bodies.^ having been subjected to a refining^ ennobliyig 
process in the grave^ shojll, by their renewal and re-construc^ 
tion^ be adapted to higher aims and more stupendous 
achievements. They sunk in death beneath the primal 
curse and bedewed with the tears of the living — weak, 
natural, corrupt, mortal and earthly. They rise and 
enter Heaven — powerful, spiritual, incorruptible, immor- 
tal and heavenly. Such is the great transforming, the 



HEAVEN. 



373 



little less than creative change, that is to pass upon the 
material, organic part of our nature. This mortal, bro- 
ken loose from the po^er of death, is invested with im- 
perishable vigor and beauty : and thus the grave be- 
comes the great connecting link betvreen humanity and 
Heaven. 

In Heaven our wants are all supplied. The river of 
God, diflfusing light and gladness, shall lave its center 
and enrich its borders. The light of life and joy per- 
vades its whole extent. Whatever our wants and wishes 
may be — infinite in number and boundless in aim — Heav- 
en accords a full supply. 

Enjoyment and satiety spring and luxuriate in a 
thousand forms. The Tree of life, the bread of Heav- 
en, the hidden manna, and the waters of salvation 
welling from beneath the throne of God — these shall pre- 
vent the recurrence of hunger and thirst, by their ever- 
augmenting supplies, and place the redeemed beyond the 
reach of want and care. 

Sin and sorroin are no more. We are placed, by the 
confluent force of moral causes, in an eternal impotence 
of sinning, including exemption from all the possibilities 
of evil. There is, there, no aching head or brow of care, 
and the harps of Sion no longer wail, in melancholy 
diro-e, the sorrows of a bruised or broken heart ! In- 
quietude shall no longer bleed the vitals, or despair give 
fearful tension to the maddening brain. Never, again, 
shall the tear of penitence tremble in the eye of the 
mourner, nor the prayer of misery woo the throne of 
God and humbly motion Heaven for relief ! 

We shall have every variety of rational enjoyment. In- 
telligence, volition and sensibility, in all their direct and 
ultimate functions, will be actively employed, intensely 
absorbed ; and all the improved powers and energies of 



374 



HEAVEN. 



a deathless mind shall be thrown into action and achieve- 
ment, amid the objects and interests of an eternal world. 
Every energy of the mind shall share a jubilee, and 
every affection of the heart a rapture-breathing Sabbath. 
There will be a magnificence of display, a stupendous- 
ness of arrangement, an amplitude of variety, an in- 
tensity of bliss, in the immeasurable house-hold of 
Heaven, we can neither conceive nor describe. 

Even on earth, hope and enjoyment pointed us to 
every thing beautiful in nature and bright beyond it ; 
and, in Heaven, we realize the vision in a way and to an 
extent resigning to beggary the richest dreams and poe- 
try of earth. 

Heaven will forever re-u7iiie those who were friends on 
earth. There will be a renewal of the virtuous and en- 
dearing friendships of earth and time. And when the 
Christian comes to die, and angels ask for tears at sight 
of the heart's fondest ties and most touchino^ affinities 

o 

rudely wrecked and sundered by the hand of death — at 
such a moment, what single thought of earth or Heaven 
could so increase the sunset splendor of the soul, the 
cloudless rainbow of the mind, as the felt assurance of 
re-union in Heaven with those we loved and trusted 
here ! 

A pervading oneness of principle and sentiment — an 
unbroken identity of affection and feeling — will forever 
unite in undisturbed, indissoluble bonds, the great fraternity 
of Heaven's long divided family, and preclude, alike and 
forever, the possibility of division and discord. Here, 
the erring martyrs of opposing creeds no longer curse 
and ban in Mercy's name. Here, the children of Christ, 
from every fold — antipodes in modes and forms, or sev- 
ered by the world's diameter — meet to regret the frailty 
of earth and rejoice in the friendship of Heaven. 



HEAVEN. 



375 



The only remaining topic wc discuss will go to show^ 
that, essenLiiilly aaa ogous to the nature and elements^ icill 
he found circuinstaace and ewcironment, connected icith the 
happiness of Heiven. God ^'ill be beheld in the majesty 
and immensity of his nature — in regal state and display — 
upon the chosen theater of his ottu appropriate manifes- 
tation. In the essential distinctions of his benevolence, 
especially, he is beheld in the beauty and grandeur of 
his own revealings. 

The Heavenly worshipers find themselves in unre- 
strained neighborhood with the throne and palace of 
God, the river and tree of life, the family and pavil- 
ions, the splendor and equipage of Heaven ; and, in full 
and satisfying fruition, they bask in his rays and burn 
in his love. 

Ht'avcn is a state of society but feebly typed by that of 
earth. All our mortal and immortal instincts proclaim 
tluit man was made for society, and it is the evidence of 
history and consciousness, that we are weeds without 
it.'' Without it. Heaven is dismantled of its most en- 
dearing charms, and earth becomes the sepulcher of joy. 

Of the society of Heaven we can form no adequate 
idea. Every age of time and division of earth — every 
creed and language — every color and clime — shall pre- 
sent their hundreds, thousands and millions, centupli- 
cated beyond the reach of numbers, at the foot of the 
thone of God, where death and sin are not. Myriads, 
too, may be there from other worlds — from districts of 
God's unfallen creation. Ours may be the only prodigal 
in the great family of worlds ; and, after due time and 
trial, all may meet in this vast region. And, not only 
the millions of the past and the saved of ages that time 
yet holds in reserve, but the angelic princes and person- 
ages, sages and citizens, of the celestial polity, are inclu- 



376 



HEAVEN. 



ded in the count and swell the society of Heaven. And 
of this society you and I, living to God and dying in 
Christ, are equal and welcome members ! 

Intellectual elevation, not less than moral purity^ will 
always distinguish the inhabitants of Heaven. Knowledge, 
in endless variety and in a continuous flood of rich dis- 
covery, will pour in upon them, and the utmost accumu- 
lation will but increase the thirst to know ! And thus, 
alive to the indeterminate increase of knowledge, the 
light of eternity alone can limit the field over which it 
expatiates. But what we shall know of the universe of 
things, vast and boundless as eternity itself, that eternity 
alone can tell 1 

We may conceive, however, of the intellectual, immor- 
tal nations found in Heaven, that their capacity to know 
and acquire, w411 be distinguished by something like 
geometrical progression. Every principle and fact of 
celestial intelligence will be found pregnant and invested 
with important analogies and relations; and these, natu- 
rally and necessarily, v/ill multiply themselves, in combi- 
nation with others ; and the result will be, that the everles- 
senino' distance between the created and uncreated, will 
but terminate in an indefinitely augmented sense of the 
grandeur and condescension of Godhead ! 

In these reflections^ though dimly, we are Divinely guided. 
In the generality of their range and meaning, if not more 
minutely, they are plainly suggested and authorized by 
the word of God. We have feebly essayed the depiction 
of a place and state, " vv hither the Forerunner hath for 
us entered.^' Messiah is the great precursor, the leader 
of salvation and the Church, upon the path and at the 
goal we have attempted to describe. 

He is with us amid the cares and pains of mortality, 
the anquish and dismay, of death. And he who came to 



HEAVEN. 



S77 



instruct and died to redeem, who dignified our nature 
and long plead our cause in Heaven, will bring together 
and there unite, in one vast family, individuals and orders 
the most diverse and unequal, the ''least" and the 
''greatest," the most ancient as well as recent, in the 
myriad lands and among the thousand tribes from 
which they have been born to him, and are now destined 
to the inheritance of his love. 

The ei^er successive eras of endless cluratioii will but add 
fresh accessions of ca'po.city and fruAtion. What a destiny 
awaits us ! In companionship with the Everliving, and 
commensurate with God's own duration, will be our pro- 
gress upon the path of immortality. " The true God and 
Eternal Life/' has pledged his all sufficiency to this effect : 
" Because I live, ye shall live also." In a word, human 
nature, in its essential elements of matter and mind, 
trained and restored by Christianity, inherits immortality 
of life, amid the glories and stabilities of that kingdom 
prepared for all the blest of God ! 

Here, however, we are compelled to pause. We find 
oui'selves at the very boundary of the vast circle, over 
which thought and language throw the light of their 
lessons, and we can proceed no further — ascend no 
higher 1 Awed in thought, and reverent in feeling, the 
vision before us seems to be sealed by its own God-like 
resplendence ! 

Of the rank and fortunes, the relations and ministry, 
I of cherubim and seraphim — how employed and what 
I achieved by them — we can say no more. Of the beauty 
i and grandeur, the forms and colors, the groves and 
gardens, the temples and melody, palaces and triumphs, 
existing the objects of interest and delight to the immor- 
tal nations adorning the fields and plains of Heaven, we 
can tell you naught in addition. 
16^ 



S78 



HEAVEN. 



Andy in conclusion, can only remind you of the perpeiuiiy 
of ike whole. This thought must redouble the joy and 
consummate the felicity of Heaven. Ours there, will be 
an existence which death can neither intercept nor put 
an end to. Throughout the countless throng, so magni- 
ficently begirting the throne of God, intellectual interest 
and high wrought emotion will know neither decay nor 
change. 

But, we are again reminded, we cannot grasp the orb, 
and have no arithmetic with which to number the years 
of eternity ; and, by how far we are unable to depict, 
even to ourselves, the princely grandeur of the Heav- 
enly world, we must fail to bear you aloft through 
its ample dominions. Imagination, awed and shrink- 
ing, retreats from the task, and the bewildering anxiety 
of created minds, is lost in the immensity of the con- 
tempi ation ! 

Such, in dim, imperfect outline, is the Heaven of our 
hopes ! And where, you may ask, does our farewell 
gaze part with the Christian ? We leave him throned 
and sceptered, with harp and palm, amid this very 
scene — the scene we have so feebly described ! We see 
the victor and we see his crown ! We see the hero and 
we hear his song ! We see the conqueror and we see 
the weapons of his warfare, adorning the palace walls of 
Heaven, ready to make proof of their temper again, 
should the fortunes of virtue, or the welfare of the uni- 
verse, ever require it ! 



676 # 




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